I would like to call the May 5th meeting of the city of Santa Cruz Planning Commission to order. Could we have a roll call please? Thank you. Are there any statements of disqualification? I don't think we have any action items, but any statements of disqualification for this evening? Hearing none, we will move to oral communications. This is the time for the members of the public to address this mission on the agenda items. Can we have staff mute? We have some feedback coming through. We're on to oral communications. This is time for any members of the public to address the Planning Commission for agenda items that are not on the agenda tonight, so items not on the agenda. At this time, could we have any members of the public who would like to address the commission, please raise your hand. You can do that by pressing star 9 on your phone. We'll give a second to the lag here. Last call for any members of the public who would like to speak during oral communications, which is for none agenda items this evening. Clerk, I do not see any hands. Can you go ahead and confirm? That is correct. Okay. Thank you. We'll move along to approval of the minutes. We have two sets of minutes to approve, minutes for March 3rd and the minutes of March 17th. I would entertain a motion to approve those minutes at this time. Or if there's any changes or edits. I'll move the minutes. I'll second. Okay. Could we have a roll call vote for approval of the minutes for March 3rd and March 17th, motion by Commissioner Schifrin and seconded by Commissioner Kennedy. We have a roll call. Mr. Conway. Aye. Greenberg. Aye. Maxwell. Aye. Kennedy. Aye. Mr. Keven-Miller. Aye. Schifrin. Aye. Stockton. Aye. Okay. Moving right along, we're moving to general business. And we're having a staff report on the downtown plan expansion project review of the department of scenarios. Staff, could we have a report, please? Hi, good evening, everyone. My name's Sarah Noisy. I'm a senior planner in the advanced planning division. And I am here tonight with our consultant team made up of Bill Wiseman, Justin Dool, and hopefully Matt Thompson will be able to join us shortly. And we are going to be going through some like the background of the project, how what we've gotten done so far on this project to expand the boundary of our existing downtown plan into the area south of Laurel. And then we're going to go through the materials that we have created around sort of what are the development scenarios that we're considering in this area. And taking us through to discussion with your commission to gather further input, answer questions and start to shape what are the components that are going to go into a preferred development scenario. Yeah, Nathan and Catherine are both on. Lee, can you mute your mic, please? Yeah, both CCTV and Lee apologies. We're having feedback from both of you. Thank you. So those components that will go into a preferred scenario that will get studied under an EIR that we'll start, we're hoping to kick off later this summer. So, Bill, if you could share the presentation from your screen, we'll go ahead and get started. Hey, give me a second here. Okay, that it. Yeah, great. So let's go ahead and advance to the next slide. So I already already introduced myself. I'd also like to introduce our consultant team. So Bill Wiseman is our prime consultant with Kim Lee Horn, who's really like carrying the vision for this and bringing this whole project together for us. He's working with Justin Dool at Dahlin Group, who's been responsible for helping us visualize and model some of these development scenarios and think about how development can actually fit together. And then Matt Thompson is a local architect that has just decades of experience in Santa Cruz and is bringing insight into the just the character of the city. And then he's been, Matthew's been working really hard on getting the cross sections for the civic spaces, the public space, the streetscapes pulled together. So next slide, please. So we're going to go over an overview of the project and then sort of summarize the work that's been done so far. We'll talk about, Bill, we'll talk briefly about the community, our first round of community engagement and the survey that we put out, as well as the highlights of our real estate market overview study. And then he'll go into the open house station topic. So there was a lot of information that we put together and had at our open house on April 20th. But I think some of you were able to attend, which was great. And so we'll go through that and then we'll have time for discussion at the end, which is of course the main point of tonight is to hear from your commission. So project overview, let's go through it. So the context for this project is, as I mentioned, we are expanding the boundary of our downtown plan, which is shown here in blue. That's the existing boundary that's part of the downtown plan. And we're looking at expanding it into the area that is in that red shown in red there. That's our project area, what we call the zone or the project area. And so we'll also then be amending the beach south of Laurelplan, the boundaries of which are shown in green on this map. So we'll essentially be taking this area out of the beach south of Laurelplan and making it part of the downtown plan as part of this process. So just a little bit of background on the downtown plan itself. This was originally written in the early 90s as the city was recovering from the Loma Prieta earthquake in 89. We've done updates to it over the past two decades in the early 2000s in the mid 2010s. Most recently in 2018, we increased height and allowed more residential uses in the core of our downtown. And we have seen that be a really effective. We've seen as your commission is no doubt aware, many more residential project proposals in our downtown since adding that additional increment of height in certain areas. So I just want to be clear for members of the public that might be listening in, you know, a plan sets allowances for development and looks at what could be built and what might be built. And it's not a, you know, a dictate of what has to be built. It sets allowances that private developers can then come in and use and develop within. So that's what we're talking about doing is setting new allowances for this area that's south of Laurel Street. Our this plan is broken down into areas, this downtown plan, neighborhood areas. And each of those neighborhood areas has slightly different conditions set for, you know, the size of development that can be built there, the intensity of development and the types of uses that are expected in each of those different neighborhoods. There are some of these neighborhoods that are really intended more for preservation rather than change. So I think as we move south of Laurel, we are looking at creating an area for more change. And I just want to acknowledge that we do have things in our plans that sometimes do call for preservation and maintaining things as well. So this project is funded by two grant funding sources, our regional early action planning grant and a local early action planning grant. I think that's what the L stands for in Leap. And for both, for both of those funding sources, the primary category that we ticked in order to qualify for funding is that this project aims to increase the housing capacity for the city. So that's the primary thing that we're after. And we're also going to be looking at ways that economic opportunity could be increased with this space for new local businesses, space employment space for local workers. The project will include drafting an EIR under the California Environmental Quality Act, an environmental impact report, typically a project of this size. We expect that to take a little bit less than a year. And so these grant funding sources are really crucial for the city to be able to pursue this work at a total four hundred fifty thousand dollars. That's going to fund the bulk of this work with Kimley Horan and their team. Next slide. OK, so our project study area is a total of twenty nine acres. You know, we are including areas in the San Lorenzo River just in and on both sides of all the streets that we are that border the core of the project area just to indicate that we're we're intending to plan for all of these areas. We're going to have policies about the Levy Trail. We're going to have policies about streetscape and streetway and street and circulation improvements. And so that's why we're showing, you know, those boundaries going out a little ways. But this is the area. Sorry, we just go back. I'll just just to orient you, everyone, a little bit. So, of course, the key features in this area are the Warriors Arena, which you see on the middle right side of your screen there. That's their existing arena. We have the 555 Pacific Project, which is at the low at the bend there between Pacific and Front Street. And then we have sort of a scattering of other uses in this area, some of which are very well established and, you know, like have been really long time tenants and others, others of which are sort of like new and upcoming. This is the area, of course, where 130 the 130 Center Street project will will be built eventually. It's just right there for bills pointing. So that's sort of a little bit of an orientation here directly to the to the west of this is a neighborhood that carries zoning for neighborhood conservation. So we didn't think that would be an appropriate area to plan for more growth. The whole point of neighborhood conservation zoning is preserving that existing character and having policies in place to encourage investment in those existing homes and structures. So that's hence the that's sort of the origin of this boundary that you see here is that we are leaving that area alone, that neighborhood conservation zone and focusing on really like where are the biggest parcels where is the existing commercial development where there you know, there's really potential for interest development interest to be coming in in the next sort of two to three decades. That's typically the timeline we're planning on. And so we'll talk about the goals are initial objectives for this for this plan. So as I mentioned at the beginning, adding multi family housing is really top of minds. That's one of the primary goals here. We also want to create opportunities for public amenities and improvements to infrastructure. So parks looking harder at the levy trail, other spaces for community use. And you'll see as we get further into that, you know, we have some significant opportunities to create some new spaces for the city. We want to better connect downtown in the river. That's one of the primary reasons that we chose this location to expand the downtown plan, looking at the area south of downtown. Because there has been sort of this like there has been this desire articulated in various plans over time to connect downtown to the river and make it, you know, that circulation more seamless, make it easier for visitors that are coming to the beach to find our downtown and engage with our local businesses and really see what is, you know, the true heart of Santa Cruz, which is our downtown. So we're also looking for economic opportunities for local businesses and workers in this area, which there's a lot of potential here. Which, of course, economic activity does generate tax revenue that supports city services, which serve all all city residents and visitors. We want to look at improving pedestrian and bicycle experience. So thinking about mobility, thinking about connections and then thinking about the streetscapes and the the physical facilities that are built for pedestrians and bicyclists is a significant component of this plan. And then also, of course, we're working with the warriors. They're interested in finding a site and setting some some allowances that would allow them to build a permanent modern sports arena, which is not a facility that, you know, we have really in the Monterey Bay region is like a modern sports facility. So that is a significant component of the plan as well. So next slide. OK, so just a little brief overview of our work program and schedule. So we we kicked this off last summer and and rolled right into the project discovery phase, which included doing background mapping, background information, real estate market report and kicking off our initial phase of community outreach, which Bill will talk more about, you know, the meeting we had, the survey we did, the results that we got from that effort. We're in this phase right now of evaluating these development scenarios and gathering, you know, developing them, creating them, no gathering feedback so that we can start talking about, like, what are the down for the amendments that we want to pursue to the downtown plan, sort of what's the scope of that? And then that will allow us to start our sequa process in July, which, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we expect that to take, you know, it's nine months about. So I think that's showing 10, which is, yeah, right on, right in the ballpark. And then we're looking at public hearings. So I can't speak to what goes on in your CTV. We can hear your conversation in the background. That I don't know. Maybe we need you guys to mute or keep it down in there, because we can definitely hear you. So one more time, CTV, we can hear you. So please refrain from speaking. Thanks. Go ahead, sir. Thank you, Chair. So that puts us at public hearings and adoption next summer. So about a year from where we are now, we'll be bringing back final draft of the downtown plan amendments and a final draft for review with the planning commission and city council. So next slide. And so at this point, I'm going to hand it over to Bill Wiseman, who is going to talk through the results of what we found during our project discovery phase. OK, thank you, Sarah. Everyone, can you hear me, Sarah? Can I have a thumbs up from you? Yeah, OK, great. Good evening, everybody. I'm just going to talk about first is what happened in our project discovery. And so what we did to get started is we created a engagement website, a social media website. And on that, we did a community survey. We had this what we call the ideas wall, where people could post comments on various topics. And we had an interactive map where they could actually post comments specifically in a spatial manner in the project area. We got quite a good amount of feedback. We had over 1100 total visits. And I'd say the key is with the survey responses. We got 88 people that responded to that. And then with the posting of the comments as well in total, there's probably over 400 written comments that we received either in responding to questions in the survey or through the idea as well or the interactive map. So it was a really good response rate that we got. So I'm just going to hit just a highlight of a couple or few of the survey responses that I think are most salient. First one is tells us is how many times people come down to Kaiser Permanente. And I was amazed at the number. We got 11 or more is like nearly 40 percent. So people come down and they use it quite a bit. How do they get there? Typically by cars, which is partly to be expected just because it's a regionally serving facility, but it's also an indication of the issues associated with parking and how that occurs, which is actually good because it's on an off-peak time. So it tends to work well. And with that context, what do people do when they get here? Because they need to walk from the various garages and other surface parking spaces that's in the city. They usually do something else. They go to a bar or restaurant either before or after the event. This slide is one of the questions we asked is, please rank how important following urban design features are. And if you look at the slide, the greens and the blues are what is considered more important and the yellows and the reds less important. So if you kind of look at it, the first three are really dealing with the civic spaces and what happens at the streetscape and mobility. And those are very important to people. And on the last three on the right side is really looking at the architecture and the built form and interesting. They're obviously quality of materials and architectural details, but building heights was not as important to them as other components. So we thought that was an interesting takeaway from the survey. Overall conclusions just to try to summarize it in one slide. A lot of comments about the area not being feeling that they're safe and generally that it's underutilized and underdeveloped. The area should be redeveloped. There was certainly a like, hey, let's go do something. One person said revamp it all. But when you do it, do it with a mix of restaurants, entertainment and housing and very strong theme on those those three types of uses. As evident by the survey, streetscape, civic spaces and connectivity are higher, very high priorities. And a lot of people responding saying keep the warrior. So we've got a lot of support for finding a new permanent facility for the warriors just very briefly on the market overview. Generally speaking, there's a very strong housing market, as we know, and we're seeing with other projects. And that seems to be one of the biggest from a real estate standpoint development opportunity. Office not quite as strong. So the recommendation was that it should be encouraged, but may or may or may or may or may not be developed in the near term. So I'm a little bit less the market's not as strong, but that's not to say that there isn't a market for office. And then finally with retail, new ground floor retail should be encouraged. But also the recommendation was to encourage some sort of flexibility for tenetting so that you don't end up having, you know, vacant spaces at the ground floor if the market isn't strong enough. So both the outreach effort and the down to the real estate market overview, these are available on the city's website. And there's reports that summarize in considerable detail for both of these. So the next thing that we did after the discovery phase was to start taking about what this place might look like and really start to brainstorm and working with city staff, Justin and Matthew and myself and talking about parking issues and design and all sorts of things. And really came to a culmination of dealing with a vision in two contexts. And that's kind of going to be my theme as I get through this is is what happens in the public realm and then what happens in the development space. And we put together those materials and thought it would be great to have an open house, which was nice because we were able to, you know, physically engage with people rather than just through zoom calls, etc. So we had an open house just a couple of weeks ago on the 20th and we were able to have that at the Kaiser Permanente arena that was hosted by the Warriors. So what we did is we had seven stations. So people came in and they got an overview of the project. And then there were these various stations. And you can see the titles here in the screen. And the format was to include a series of boards and people manning those stations. So there's people, I shouldn't use the word manning, people facilitating at that at each of the stations. And we also had a large board and we provided postage notes. So that's the way we were able to get a lot of comments. So we got one hundred and fifty people came to the open house and we got one hundred and ninety written comments on each of these topic areas. So really great feedback from the community and what they'd like to see and and what their response to the concepts that we promoted to them or communicated to them. So I'm going to go in a clockwork clockwise direction, starting with circulation and streetscape. So what you're seeing here on this slide on the left side is a diagram of the existing circulation. And because mobility and circulation is one of the key components for that the public was expressing, we started to look at well, how could this function, particularly with the arena being relocated or in its existing place? So the slide of the image on the right is showing you some of these concepts. One of them is to think about putting a alley along the back side here to connect these blocks and provide basically access into these skinnier, smaller parcels, but not having driveways on on fronting on Pacific Avenue. The idea within Spruce Street, what you see crossing this way with with my marker, is that to program that and try to really think about creating a civic space. And so and and changing the functionality or allowing flexibility and how that street is function or is is used and programmed. So both that would occur both in this concept on Spruce Street, which could be partially closed over here and potentially permanently closed west of Front Street. But then also the concept along Pacific Avenue is to create what's called flex zones. And I'll show what that means. There also is the idea of putting a new roundabout down at the corner here where Front Street and Pacific Avenue connect. And that's important not just for functionality, but also safety. It's a very dangerous intersection. There's a lot going on, a lot of strange geometry, so there's an opportunity to fix that. And then the last thing is to think about what we thought about was how we can open up the river and not have roads in front and between buildings and the levee and the river itself. So you could see where you've got the Laurel Street extension. It's a one way road that comes off here and comes up along the river. And then there's a parking in a road back there. So the idea would be to close those and create an interface between the urban developed areas and the river and unify that as a much more usable, friendly space. And a part of that then would entail re aligning redirecting the Laurel Street extension. So that would go along the base of Beach Hill and come up this way. And I'll show you a cross section of that diagram. And I just want to note both this and other, you know, the entirety of the presentation here. These are big picture concepts. And we know that there's a lot of issues, for example, with Laurel Street extension, there is an existing Santa Cruz County housing development project there. So we're trying to set out a vision that can be implemented over time. But none of this is going to be, you know, it's not like it's like fate of complete or it's easy. The idea is to set out a vision for for the entirety of the project site that can guide the future development. So this image here is showing you basically the circulation and streetscape. So the white areas is basically parcels that are developable. So we're trying to focus visually on what could happen, you know, along these streets and what might they look like. And this is where Matthew's come in and done some really great illustrations and cross sections to help us to visualize and communicate what these areas might look like. So I'm going to go through just a few of these to show some of the kind of key cross sections. This first cross section is showing you looking across basically looking north at a cross section all along Spruce Street. So on the left side is Pacific Avenue and then Front Street is here and then the river and the levees on this side. These are building forms that are associated with the scenario number three. So we're not proposing that this is, you know, what's final. It's just giving you a sense of scale of how these streetscapes would work with even the most intense development under the three scenarios that we're going to talk about a little later. This is a cross section along Front Street, basically along that hillside. So this is what the character of the street would look like. This is the arena, basically on the left side here. And for context, this is Beach Hill and one of the taller structures is an old building called Gold or Gold Building, an old house. It dates back to the 1890s Golden Gate Villa. So this just give a context of scale and how the streetscape would look. This cross section is showing the Laurel Street extension. So we've got basically a one lane road with separated pedestrian path, and then you can see its relationship to the hillside. The idea is to to tuck the road up against that hillside. And this is a cross section looking south. I'll get my directions right south along the levee. And one of the things that I didn't mention and I want to go back, so I failed to do that because it's going to relate to what you're seeing in this image. So bear with me while I go back here. One of the key concepts in this is to think about how we can unify the streetscape with the river and, excuse me, with the levee itself. So what we're thinking in the design concept here is that you could do starting at Pacific Avenue, a very moderate grade of one and a half percent, it would almost be imperceptible for people walking along with the school street. But what could happen is, is by the time you get out to the levee, there's no hill. So essentially, we want to meet the grade at the levee so that it reinforces and better connects the entire streetscape and public realm within the study area with the river levee itself. So if I go to this cross section, this is showing where this is the raised elevation and then how that can meet at the levee itself. So another station, second station that we had was on beach connectivity. So as Sarah mentioned, one of the primary goals in this project that's been looked at for many years is how do we better connect the downtown with the beach? And essentially, there's kind of two ways that you can get to the beach. You can go around the hill or you can go over the hill. So this diagram shows how the context of both in blue, how you'd be going around Beach Hill. And then Cliff Street is what's highlighted here in green. So we saw Cliff Street is a really great opportunity because it's also the most direct connection from the study area and downtown to the beach. So the concept here is to there's a stairways that goes up to Lookout, which is a really wonderful look at it's cut in beautiful views of the whole city of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz mountains, etc. So it's a strong nodal point, if you will, and creates an opportunity to do something special up the top there. And then to along Cliff Street is to create basically a ceremonial connection is what we're calling it between that overlook and the boardwalk. So we're talking about reconfiguring the parking, not removing the parking, but just creating a little bit more symmetry in the parking, improving the pedestrian and bike mobility along there, improving the landscaping with some sort of consistent landscaping, maybe some treatments at intersections so that it's safer to walk along there. And then possibly once you get down closer to the beach, you could transition that in this concept. It's using palm trees to reinforce that notion of connectivity with the beach. And this is just some imagery. This is an aerial view that we took from some drone footage that's showing Cliff Street going down and you can see its axis is straight down to the hill from that road. This is a view down here of the street and you can see it's a very wide street. So it's got a lot of opportunities. We would not constrain by having an arrow cross section there. So there's a lot of opportunities there. And then you can see some imagery on the left and right. This is the view from the top. The next station that we communicated or got feedback from the public is what we called Civic Spaces in the Arena. So the idea here is thinking about an opportunity to create a true gathering place for the community. We're still getting a CTV if they can quiet down a little bit or put on mute, that'd be great. So Hold on one second. I don't know if you have the ability to communicate with the folks at CCTV, but if you could do that, either by phone or text or email, because we're still getting feedback from them pretty regularly. Thank you. Sorry for the rift from Bill. Go ahead. No worries. This is the nature of Zoom. Okay, so within this context, I'd say the primary theme here is trying to create a safe, accessible and engaging space for the community for area events and for visitors of all ages. So this is just kind of the three big takeaways, the big ideas. And trying to revitalize and creating a vibrant downtown. And we use the themes of art, entertainment, technology and illumination. And I'll show a little bit about how we did that. And the other is to really connect that downtown area, excuse me, connect the downtown with the beach. So this graphic is showing the concept of creating Spruce Street, and particularly where if we have the building set back far enough, and you saw that in one of the cross sections, is that you can create a really enhanced and rather large, almost two acre area from Pacific Avenue out to the levee, and then further expand that with improvements along the levee itself. So it's creating a space that can become truly a gathering space for people in the community. And when I manned this station during the open house, and people really were engaged with that idea of having a place in the city, where you could have maybe up to like 4,000 people could fit in this space. So it wouldn't be a small space. And it would be something with, you know, streetscape improvements and hardscape, etc. to really create a programmed area that can basically kind of the concept of the arena. And what's happening in a lot of these sports arenas is the idea of entertainment on the inside and the outside. So it's not just going into a building to watch a game or go to a concert or whatnot, but actually engaging that that type of activity out into the public realm itself. Other components of this is the the overlook that I talked about, levee trail improvements, and then the concept of flex zone along Pacific Avenue. So here's a cross section. Sorry, I thought I'd moved that down here. So this is a cross section. This is looking down Spruce Street between Pacific and Front Street out towards the river. So you can see the context of a very wide space, and then being able to program that and change that out. For example, let's say you wanted to have a farmer's market, for example, and you could use ways of closing that off temporarily, and then being able to use that space for other purposes than just, you know, all the time for vehicles. So the concept of the Pacific Avenue flex zone. So along Pacific Avenue, there's ways to look at how the parking occurs on the edges of the road. And so what you're looking at is two examples. This first one is First Street in Livermore. You'll notice that the cars are angled parking in on both sides of the street. But there's also a difference in the pavement, and there's trees in between. So what essentially, you can program this so that it can function by parking, but then it's also flexible, where you can use those areas in different manners to maybe create for restaurants or events. Here's an example in Castro Street in Mountain View. So there really, this is an outdoor dining experience where you can basically reutilize that middle space. And this is for example, where those trees are. So that becomes a multifunctional type of area. So the other component of this is what we're calling art and activation. And the idea here is that, you know, following along the lines of that inside out is how you create a sort of a there and an entertainment district that's vibrant and has activity and a place to go to. So the idea of this is that the hub is this sort of center, the zone we're calling it. And within that center area is this area of activated light. And it's kind of like in my describing it of thinking about it maybe as a wayfinding tool, as a similar to a neural network, if you will. In other words, that that theme theme of lighting and done tastefully, I'm not saying that, you know, lighting, you know, big, big lights, but you could actually use light as a wayfinding tool to connect the downtown and the river and cliff or excuse me, in the beach and along the river. So the the cliff street connection and and along the river and along Pacific become then these sort of spines where maybe some treatment provides a form of wayfinding to connect into this area. So these are just some imagery of thoughts. So the idea is that to use art, artistic elements in light because, you know, people are sort of drawn to the light. So there's sort of this natural or metaphor of light and it can be interacted with. So what you're seeing in this imagery is ways of people interacting with light features but done in an artistic way. You can also use the buildings and sculptural sculptural elements. You can use street furniture to create illumination. And then you could also use it. This is the context of the wayfinding. So these are these are more urban areas admittedly, but they provide a context for how you could think about how that light can extend what you're seeing on the left side. For instance, this is the 13th street district in Denver. That's their clock tower. And they basically use that corridor. And at night, this is full of restaurants. And in fact, it's called the theater district. So it's an art and this and you know, it's an artistic district that's connected in with activities to make it kind of more 24 seven, if you will, or at least into the evening, I should say. And that art and activation thing doesn't just have to be light. So we can think about how during the day you're creating interesting interfaces for people to come to and interact with. So there's curiosity, there's youth, there's artistic, there's a lot of good interesting components here that could create some lively liveliness to the area. So what we're calling this concept is what we're calling the zone and we're taking the metaphor from the basketball context because of the Warriors. So there's this idea of being in the zone or maybe even being out of your being out of your comfort zone. And you'll notice down on the right there Thrive City, an inspiration for this is actually our Golden State Warrior. So this is obviously at a San Francisco scale. But this is showing you what the Warriors did around their Chase Center and they call this Thrive City. So it's basically an indoor outdoor, they've got a large screen up there. They've got a mix of different uses of restaurants. They've got this very interesting curving area for sitting that becomes an amphitheater. So it's a way of thinking about how we can interface the the inside of the future arena and the outside. And there's interesting I read a New York Times article, when the owners of the Golden State Warriors were designing this place, one of their sort of metrics metrics for success was they said that they want to make sure that there's people coming down both when there are events and when there's not events to their area. So this is kind of a testament to what their approach was. So with that, I'm going to hand it back over to Sarah and she's going to talk about the housing station. Thanks, Bill. So yeah, so I wanted to take a minute to talk through. Obviously, your commission is well aware that housing is one of our primary concerns, both as a city and as part of this project and elsewhere on your agenda tonight, you're having you're receiving the report on our progress in the current cycle on our housing element, which is that, you know, that plan that every jurisdiction in the state needs to write every eight years to show that we have the capacity that we need to have to plan for our, you know, expected growth based on the growth projections that the state makes. So what I wanted to show the point of showing this graph, we had this graph at the open house was to just sort of give folks some context for what they were about to see in the development scenarios that were sort of proposing or considering or thinking about collecting feedback on at this point. So what's shown here in the blue, the blue bars are the current cycle of Rena, which went from 2015 goes through the end of 2023. That was the obligation that the city had during that period to plan for and then also to build under certain other provisions of state law. What's shown in the green bars is what has actually been built in the city. And you'll see that we are failing to meet that Rena threshold in one category, the very low income category. We do have projects in the pipeline that we believe could help us meet or exceed that category, that requirement in that category by the end of 2023. And it's a matter of do they pull their permits, right? Do we get to count them in this cycle? So that's all, you know, going on in that and we're doing really well at the current moment in terms of meeting that like minimum obligation of the Rena. And what we see in these orange striped bars is the current draft, the most recent draft numbers that we are getting from Ambag about what we need to plan for and then make some adequate progress towards building in the next housing element cycle. So as you can see, there is a pretty substantial jump that we are facing with. These are units that we have to plan for. As we do our housing element, we have to show that we have sites where this much housing could be developed and be developed for these income categories, or we can't get our housing element certified, which then means we can't get grant funding, it just creates this whole domino effect of repercussions for the city. So what we have here in this project area is a significant opportunity to meet a big chunk of this Rena. So that's what you're going to see in these development scenarios is staff and consultants thinking about, you know, we know that residential structures have a lifespan of typically we would expect a multifamily building to last more than 60 years up to, you know, 100, we have buildings existing now in the city that are over 100 years old. So we want to be planning for the right kind of intensity so that these buildings really make sense as the city changes over decades and decades of time. And we want to make good use of our land resources in planning this Rena cycle so that we are set up for the next 50, 60 years of Rena cycles as that, you know, process continues, and we're going to be having to identify sites, you know, over time, you know, it's not we don't just meet this and then we're finished, we're going to meet this and then eight years later, we're going to have another assignment obligation of housing of housing units to plan for. So we want to do this in a logical organized way. And so that as we continue to move through that process over time in the future, we can continue that logical organized method of planning for growth. So these these numbers aren't final yet. So I sort of hesitate to, you know, publicize them widely and, you know, you can read the graph where we're looking at close to 3700 units that are going to be required as the total for for meeting this next housing element cycle. Next slide please. So one of the reasons that I want to talk about meeting our Rena so planning for it and then also building parts of our Rena is because it affects how the city is subject to SB 35, which everyone on this commission and probably many members of the public are familiar with because we just had our very first SB 35 application in 831 water. So SB 35 is a state law that provides for streamlined planning review process allows only 60 days or 90 days depending on the size of the project, a streamlined review for multifamily housing that meets the objective standards of the jurisdiction. So currently in our current cycle based on how much housing we've been able to build in the current housing element cycle on that previous graph. In order to qualify for that streamlined review, a project has to incorporate 50% of the units as affordable, which is why, you know, this law has been in place for five years and we've had that one application. I think that's a really tricky way to build housing is half affordable and half market rate. Like there just really aren't very many developers that are going to do that. So we haven't seen a ton of that at the 50% threshold. And I think if we can stay at that 50% threshold, we probably won't see tons and tons of SB 35 applications which sort of pull away this local discretion that we are accustomed to using in reviewing housing projects. And what is dependent on maintaining that 50% threshold is making adequate progress towards meeting our regional housing needs allocation or housing obligation by 2020, the beginning of 2028 or the end of 2027. If we if we don't make adequate progress, then we fall to the 10% tier, which the county of Santa Cruz is currently in the 10% tier. And at that point, any project that includes 10% affordable housing units qualifies for SB 35. Well, if it's outside the coastal zone, there's some other factors, but many more would qualify just simply based on the city's inclusionary requirement, which requires 20% of all units to be affordable to low income households. So SB 35 would start applying to many of those development proposals if we aren't making adequate progress over the next part of our housing element, the first half of our next housing element cycle, and making what adequate the definition of adequate progress is meeting at least half of the market rate housing allocation by the end of 2027. So that would require us building about twice as many housing units in the next in between 2024 and 2028, as we have built over the last seven years. So that's a that's a really big uptick that, you know, as staff we're thinking about, and we think as decision makers that should be part of your of the consideration is that we're looking for ways not only to plan for the housing but to plan for housing that that actually has like a decent likelihood of getting built because, you know, we'd like to stay at that 50% tier. I think if we can get projects that are doing 50% of their units as affordable units, it's more of a fair trade off with the community to say they're going to go through the streamlined process and we're going to get more affordable housing out of it. And that's just that's just less appealing when, you know, 10% is special and then it's really like most standard development projects get this like streamlined review. So that's the that's the cons some of the state law context that's going into these development scenarios. So let's go on to the next slide. Oh, sustainability and resiliency. So I'm going to talk about this really briefly before we get to development scenarios. I thought they were right after this. So one of the other topics that we talked about at the open house is sustainability and resiliency. We know those are issues that are really important for our community. We wanted to talk about the importance of the infrastructure that runs through this area. So you may have noticed that we talked about in these sort of like high level visionary scenarios reclaiming some of the land that's currently occupied by the Laurel Street extension. But we didn't talk about reclaiming or building over the land that's currently occupied by Spruce Street. And that is primarily because Spruce Street holds some very important infrastructure for the city. So in the project area, we have the pump station pump station one for the levy is right here at the corner just south of Laurel Street at front. And that's really critical for the for the city's flood resiliency. And then there's also there are also big pipes that like help, you know, bring wastewater from live oak and bring it to nearly lagoon for processing. So that street needs to stay accessible for maintenance and for and for access. And having that in this project area does provide us with this opportunity to, you know, upsize these pipes, like maintain this flood infrastructure, sort of add more capacity in there. Should that be necessary or recommended as part of through the environmental impact report. So there are some opportunities in this area to add more resiliency features relating to specifically floodwater and sea level rise that we want to incorporate and we want to hear some feedback from your commission about, you know, what are the factors that are might be the most important to think about. Obviously, you know, environmental review will come through if anything, you know, rises up from that that would be, you know, addressed as well. So sustainability and resiliency, we want to hear your thoughts, questions, concerns, ideas. Next slide. Thanks. OK, so now we'll get to the redevelopment parcels. So as I mentioned earlier, the total project area inside that red, that red line is about 29 acres of that 29 acres. There are about 15 of those acres that we think have development potential, redevelopment potential, and they're highlighted, outlined in blue here. And really what this was, this sort of like identification of redevelopment potential was based on primarily two things. It was, first of all, the size of, you know, is it a dimension and an existing use that sort of allows for a parcel that could be redeveloped. And so we're looking at larger parcels are have a heavier weight. And so you'll see there it's shown in a darker color here. And then, secondly, what's the age of that existing structure that's on that parcel, because we do know buildings have a limited lifespan and older buildings are more likely to be attractive for developers to approach and look to redevelop. So looking at about 15 acres of developable area here in this project area. So to start out, this is a map that shows the existing zoning and general plan land use designation for this area of the city. So you'll see this is coded by heights. I just want to note that the areas that are shown in pink at a 35 foot height limit CBD, those actually carry a 3.5 floor area ratio per the general plan. So it's likely that under our state law that now requires us to like allow the full capacity that's planned for in like any of your planning documents, we wouldn't be able to enforce that 35 foot height limit on a development proposal that would come in now. It would probably be closer to like a 60 foot height to hit that 3.5 floor area ratio that's allowed under the general plan. So just that's just context. So and and this the number of residential units here and the amount of commercial square footage does take that floor area ratio number into account. So that's based on that's what those numbers are based on. So if the baseline here, the current status of this area could build about 931 housing units. That's not at all. How many housing units there currently are there and so that but that sort of sets the stage of like what are we looking at in order to increase from there in compliance with meeting our grant requirements to increase housing capacity. And so then for scenario one, we started by just saying like, well, what if we just bring sort of the the existing heights that are in the downtown plan and just pull them south a little ways. So you'll see we're mirroring a long Laurel and the north part of Pacific on the west side of 50 foot height limit adjacent to this existing residential neighborhood. And on the east side of Pacific, we're going up to the 75 or 85 feet for the enhanced height zone. That's reflective of what's available to the north. And then this does include one component of a tower on block B. So right. So what this shows right now is that there would be a podium at 70 feet. And then there could be a tower element that would go up to 120 feet. And and oh, I didn't see my slide about development agreements. But I guess maybe that comes at the end. Sorry, I had a chance to like review this whole slide show. So we'll talk more a little bit about heights and how we think we can regulate heights before we move into the 3D models. Because I know that's going to be a sensitive issue for for many of us. So if we just if we essentially take what's north of Pacific and pull it south, we think we can get to just over 1300 housing units in this area. And I want to point out in this scenario, we are we are looking at having the arena stay in its current location. So you'll see that block D shows zero housing units. And that's because that's the location of the arena in the scenario. So in scenario two, we are looking at increasing height slightly and looking at moving the arena to that center block between front front street and Pacific Avenue so that it occupies a portion of that block. So then this is starting to load the height toward the river so that we're, you know, sort of using these oddly shaped parcels. So there's some there's just a reality of development that housing can sort of get fit into parcels that are sort of awkwardly shaped. But things like lots of parking arenas and certain types of commercial development are really much better suited to rectangular blocks. It's just much more efficient. And I'm sure you can imagine, you know, the dimensions of an arena are pretty specific. And so there are reasons that we might that it makes a lot of sense to put the arena on this block between Pacific and front street. And that is definitely one of the things that we want to hear commentary from the Commission on about your feelings about place the placement of the arena, how that might relate to, you know, the programming and, you know, relating to the river, being closer to the river, being further away from the river. I think there are lots of considerations about where that where that arena is located that that will affect how it's built in terms of where do the Warriors go during the construction period, right? So if it's being built on the site that they're currently occupying, how are they going to manage those couple of seasons of play while the while the building's under construction? And then also thinking about placing the arena here next next to the river, I think we would also want to consider how the acoustics of that might help sound travel further up and down the river channel. So I think that there are just several reasons to think that through. There are, you know, thinking about a great civic space and public Plaza that could be put in place in front of an arena and thinking about whether that belongs, you know, right on the river or, you know, block from the river and can connect in some, you know, during like major events, but maybe not all the time. So having some separation at some times. So, you know, those are kind of some of the things we want to think about when we think about exactly where is that arena located within these development scenarios. But in scenario two, adding some more height on block D, which is also like a pretty large block. So taking that up to that base podium of 70 feet, just like the block to the north, and then adding again some tower elements this time going up to 160 feet allows us to have really some great views also from the tops of these buildings. You know, we got comments from a lot of people about like, well, some people, I should say, about, you know, what if we had rooftop access for the public in these places and we could have, you know, interpretation about Santa Cruz Mountains, the San Lorenzo River, the beach, you know, and you can really see the connection to all of it from that height. It's a really significant opportunity. And it also just, you know, allows us to provide about 200 to 300 more housing units in this area by going up on these blocks and then having another 120 foot tower component on block A just south of Laurel Street. So this this scenario gets us up to 1579 units in the project area. OK, and so then this is scenario three, which is our the most intense scenario that we're currently discussing and, you know, gathering feedback and reactions about this scenario gets us to just over 1700 units and it does that by adding height primarily on block B, but then also bringing up to the tower on block A to 160 feet rather than 120 feet. So we have a tower on block B that would go all the way up to 200 feet. And the locations of those tower elements, of course, is a little bit fungible and could be moved around. Jason can talk about, you know, there are sort of some spacing considerations and, you know, maximum floor plate that you want to do with residential development to really make that the most efficient. But the idea of what we want to show here on the map is that it's we're not intending that the entire block would go to that height. It would just be some smaller percentage that would be allowed to go taller. This scenario also incorporates some housing on the south end of C block. So in block C2 you're also seeing a base of 75 and a tower component up to 120. So that lets us capture some of the south end of that block for a taller building just south of the arena. So this one also shows the arena on block C1 sort of in that center location. OK, and then I think I have one more slide. OK, maybe two more slides. OK, so this is just sort of a summary. You have this in your packet. You have also all the backup detail in your packet, all of the excel sheets that show the calculations that ran to in order to create these models, but this just kind of allows you to compare them directly. So in scenario one, primarily, I think this is based on the location of the arena arena. We see that we have slightly less commercial square footage showing in scenario one than we do in scenarios two and three. And that has to do with the block that the arena is located on. And then you can also see that we're just, you know, our base floor area is climbing through all of these scenarios and and that goes along with, of course, the unit count in each in each case.  Those are the sites with the oldest buildings and they're the largest box. So just those are the places that it's going to be most appealing for a developer to pursue redevelopment. OK. OK, so height and density controls, I did want to just take a minute because these are more intense heights than we have seen before in Santa Cruz. And so it would not surprise me that some people might be a little you know, apprehensive or have some concerns about that. So I just want to talk through a little bit how we've been thinking about these heights as we're sort of, you know, putting these initial scenarios together. So the first thing is that are currently in the city every because of our inclusionary requirement, which requires 20% of the housing units be affordable to a low income household, all developments are entitled qualify for a density bonus, which would allow them to add units, waive site standards and seek concessions. So sometimes a project development will seek waivers or concessions without adding any units. Sometimes developers will want to pursue certain specific waivers in and while adding units and not others. And there's really just a whole mix of the different ways that a density bonus could be could be applied on a given site. And it's it's really hard to model that directly and specifically because there are so many variables that go into it. So the way that we've been kind of thinking about these heights and we are still accepting feedback on this, of course, is that the heights that we're showing here could be capped through a developer's agreement. So a developer's agreement is an agreement between the city and a private developer that in exchange for providing some public benefit to the city and the community that the developer gets some some extra entitlement. So and typically it's more density, more units, more height or or less parking or less open space. So that kind of those are the the range of things that allow that development envelope to be a little bit bigger to fit more units and make it a more profitable project for the developer. And we could do that if, you know, we're getting a public benefit out of it. So we've been considering that could be one tool we could use in this plan and we could have sort of two paths in written into the downtown plan. And we can say, you know, if you do a developer agreement to provide, you know, X, Y and Z public benefit or anything in this list of benefits, then you can get these heights that we're showing in the scenarios. And if you're unwilling to do a development agreement, then you have a lower base height because we're going to assume that you're going to be pursuing a density bonus, right. And so because we're doing a specific plan, I think we have the opportunity to really like lay that out. So that's kind of how we're thinking about these scenarios at this point. Yeah. So that's sorry, I covered all my points on that slide. And so now at this point, I am going to hand it off to Justin Duel of Dallin, who did all of the modeling for the these scenarios. And he's going to talk us through sort of what they show and why we sort of made some of the initial choices we did. And of course, we're here to get your feedback on all of it. So Justin, are you there? I'm here. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah. Thank you, Bill. Thank you both. And thank you to the Commission for your time tonight. So I think we have we have four view angles here to kind of walk you guys through and sounds like you've seen, I'm not sure how in depth you've gone into the spreadsheets that have all the numbers that that back this up, but this is through all through a series of assumptions and kind of typical development practices. We've put these together as visual representations of what those spreadsheets and the summary tables are are conveying. So our first view here is from the south. It's kind of a bird's eye view taken from above Beach Hill. And it kind of helps to put all the scenarios in the context of what's around them. And so I think we have kind of four significant context scenarios. We have the, of course, the existing downtown area to the north, the river to the east. We have Beach Hill to the south and then we have the neighborhood conservation area immediately adjacent to the west. And as Sarah was mentioning, the areas that are currently would be governed, we believe by the the FAR and the general plan for the CBD designation actually shows that the tallest heights in the baseline scenario occurring immediately adjacent to that conservation neighborhood conservation area. So in terms of kind of how the the the density gradient of the existing downtown plan area that we're extending to the south works that that's kind of it's kind of the inverse of what that what that shows. So as we move from the baseline scenario to scenario one in that in that block, you can actually see those those blocks drop by a couple of stories of 3.5 on that sort of a block scale we think is probably going to occur at a five to six story. We've moved this back into a 50 foot height zone and scenario one. And and the bulk of the density now is occurring in the four blocks a through D with some slightly taller height on block B, which is the one closest to the river and the Laurel Street bridge. So let's see, as we move in from here into scenario two, we'll see the arena move and more into the center of the plan. And that's as as we're increasing height and density, we want to we want to kind of continue to emphasize that gradient, you know, respecting the neighbors, it's bringing a little more height against the river edge because there are residential now become taller than what the arena envelope would be. They're also phasing considerations for the arena that would factor into that. And then the difference between scenario two and scenario three is is kind of marginal at this point. Once we've gone to a base height of 85 feet everywhere and a few select tower locations, we can see we're just we're really just stacking a few extra floors on top of that. So if we if we move into the next view angle, it's from this would be from across the river. And we're looking we're looking back toward the arena on the sort of the left there snugged up against Beach Hill. And that's in the existing existing arenas location. One thing I think it's interesting to note here is how the the adjacent landform of Beach Hill and the development that's on top of that, that's only you know, in a one to two story range actually is approximately the same level as as what comes out in our plan area down several stories lower kind of creates a very similar skyline at this scenario. And as you can see, we've modeled some of the the buildings that are still in the pipeline are under construction north of Laurel. And it's and there's really it's a pretty consistent what you'd call a base height for that for a base density. You go back to slide, please and show the scenario three per second. Thank you. That's that's fine. So we'll move we'll move through the same set of scenarios here and you can kind of see how that how that how that gradient changes again as we move from from the baseline to scenario one that the arenas in the same location that that sort of base plant height of density is about the same. And there's only a single area in block B where we we've brought the height up a little bit scenario two. And then scenario three push that arena back and they pull more height out toward the river. And again, all that the highest intensity there is all in the foreground to us. And it's it's it's done really to respect the context and the neighborhood conservation area largely. And then then the difference between scenario two and scenario three is is again just a few floors they're stacking on top. So the third view is above the roundabout adjacent to people park. And it's looking back to the northeast along Pacific in the baseline scenario. Those are existing residential districts are are I think 35 36 foot height limit just behind the first set of buildings. You can see the proposed project there that despite that height limit has used a density bonus and gone up I think to 75 or 85 feet. And and so that there's that that kind of highlights the you know what the expectation is given state law that that unless you get some some kind of controls in place in some kind of assurances as much as you can there's not a lot you can do to to prevent that. So I think that that kind of illustrates one of those cases right there. As as we move into the the first scenario the the development in the foreground is is we raised the height limit to 75 feet here. And so it's starting it's now reflecting that kind of same height and grain of architecture and you don't you're really not seeing anything come above that base height again yet in scenario to the the taller height is introduced. And again it's you know it's away from from this edge where we're we're breaking into the kind of the tower scenario and you can see from this angle some of the tower separation. And so we've discussed a number of things along the way about you know tower as you go into what we call a quote unquote tower floor plate the controls things like proportion of length to width you know percentage of the block that is allowed to go up to a certain height and minimum spacing between portions of the building that exceed a certain base height all designed to really to prevent what we sometimes refer to as slab towers as opposed to point towers and and you know kind of massive density as opposed to slender density or some some of the terms that we use. So we have a number of different things you know when we go to these heights that we like to we like to use to to you know do the best that we can to think of this from a form perspective and and control the impact of the density. Scenario three then as we go on is still still allowing for some of that separation you're seeing some towers in the foreground and some in the background there but they're all they're all filled back you know again in in the in the spirit of the existing downtown plan to to taper down from from the downtown edge of the river edge toward the adjacent neighborhoods. So the final view we have is this is on the left side of the screen that's that's Laurel Street down to the Laurel Street bridge on the very very right hand side you can see and we don't have the trees the trees that are really there would block it but the the dream in is back back there in the distance just to kind of give you a little bit of context. Baseline scenario again you can actually kind of see along kind of the that the Pacific and Laurel edge where we have that general plan driven FAR density kind of the tallest heights at about six floors and we move into scenario one we see that drop and the density behind it start to rise which can actually is a nice nice move. The scenario to we again we see this tower start to come up out of that that base height. Next slide please go and from this angle you can really see how some of those controls of separation and proportion and can control that it is most certainly not an entire block being built up to those heights when we talk about the flex zones and the idea of which is that they're they're located within a certain set of parameters within the block not necessarily controlling precisely where they go they can have the ability to flex within each block subject to the other controls that we're talking about and then lastly scenario three that the height increases a little bit but the separation all stays the same and and so it's really similar to to some other kind of cities who have implemented urban design aspects and controls you know it's the idea is kind of about creating a little bit of a somewhat of a hill form out of the the skyline things that that that step and have a general density gradient that kind of makes sense and you know I think we've we've opened up some possibilities for actually real kind of landmark signature buildings that would that would anchor this this district calling the zone for now so I think that's it from my standpoint I think we'll go back maybe to Sarah for the for the summary I was ready for Bill to do this one Bill were you ready to do this one either way I'll just give it back on then I'll pass it over you so as I said before we had 190 comments and 150 people showed up so we got a lot of good back feedback so this is just in summary of of what we heard overall very positive support for the design concepts and the opportunity to create an entertainment district that's vibrant walkable and safe so people are excited about kind of creating a there and the idea of that Plaza and a community meeting space for you know New Year's Eve event or holiday lighting or the Halloween events and you know whatever types of events you can imagine but in fact one of the one of the people said wouldn't it be great you could have some sort of event down there with food trucks and they relate to the to the river and just really creating an interesting space along Spruce Street so a lot of good feedback in that context of the community's desire to have that type of of amenity in their downtown and for the community in the region really strong support from more housing that was a very consistent theme strong support for the warriors and construction of a permanent arena and some of the issues that for further consideration parking and traffic congestion particularly during the summer months and you know what happens down at the beach but just getting through downtown and dealing with parking et cetera support for and opportunities for local businesses and then lastly varied options regarding development scenarios so I can't say that was like there certainly was a broad spectrum there was many people saying development or scenario three is you know more of it bring it on some were like well maybe we don't need that much height but it certainly wasn't adamant opinion to say it was a broad spectrum and everyone was super supportive I take the whole thing was it was a constructive open house session where they were being heard and a lot of great feedback was received as a result of the format so I'll hand it over to you Sarah OK thanks OK so we have you know spent about an hour here walking you through a ton of information and so there are lots of you know we're obviously we can talk about whatever you want to talk about and there are a few things that it would be the most helpful to us and as we move to you know from where we are now towards like getting to a preferred scenario or preferred options you know because we might want to consider different options for the roadway realignment or the arena location these are the areas that would be the most helpful to us to sort of focus the discussion circulation and realignments I know there is probably some thoughts on that beach connectivity via cliff street any any ideas or concerns or issues or you know thoughts you have on that obviously building heights are going to be a topic of conversation and the range of housing units it would be really helpful if we could get to kind of narrow down a range of housing units that your commission is interested in seeing and is interested in staff pursuing from here we are going to be talking to the downtown commission as well next week getting feedback from them and I expect that their feedback is going to be a little broader you know they are business owners they manage the parking district so they're going to be focusing on kind of different things and you all as the planning commission obviously land use is you know what's here in your wheel WAP house to advise the city council about so any specificity that we can get around the range of housing units that we want to study in the EIR would be real helpful opinions about the arena location I'm interested if there are you know we want to study options or if we want to settle on one at this point and then of course any ideas or thoughts you have about civic spaces either you know programming alignment location all of that and so then I think that's our last slide and then we were available for any questions that your commission may have at this point okay thank you so much Sarah and the consultant team for that presentation okay what I'd like to do now is open it up to the commissioners for a clarifying question as Sarah pointed out there was a lot of information there and I want to try to have all of us and I'm reminding myself that this is just the time that we'll go for clarifying questions before we launch into the broader discussion and provide our feedback so if any commissioners have questions I have a couple and go ahead and raise your hand and we can get staff to kind of clarify any of the information you heard I'll go ahead and start and then if anybody else has I was wondering Sarah I see commissioner and CD Miller so just go ahead and raise your hand and we'll just bounce it around for clarifying questions I think this might be for staff but how many residents currently live in residential housing in the expansion area that's a great question thank you for that so I actually I have pulled that number I want to say it's between 200 and 300 I don't have the exact number in front of me unfortunately but yeah it's in that range okay and just like a broader question I think I think we're at about the total population of Santa Cruz now is about 64,000 that's a little more than that okay but yes okay okay I'm just trying to get some context for the outreach efforts and what was the timing for the outreach was it I couldn't if it was in the packet I must have missed it was it like a three or four month thing for the initial for our for our first outreach in the fall I mean yeah so there was the online portion there was the open house there was a couple other elements what was the length of time for that kind of engagement on the outreach strategy yeah so our first meeting that we had was back in October and we publicized that through all of our standard city channels the warriors also reached out to their mailing list to help publicize that so and we had I would say between 20 and 30 folks attend that first initial online workshop and then all of that content was put on our website and that was available for four weeks on our through our project website for more folks to weigh in and we did more outreach through our social media channels and so we reached out to the downtown business association and some other folks that have reached downtown other community organizations that are operating downtown shared with their mailing lists so and then we so we gathered feedback for the from the survey for four or five weeks and then we closed the survey we left the ideas walls up for a little while and the closed those again before the holidays and so we could kind of gather all of that feedback together and then spend you know January through the beginning of April working on having that feedback and form these development scenarios and then for the open house that we had we sent direct mailers to anyone within 500 foot radius of the project area or within the project area and then also did outreach through all of our you know city social media channels posting on the city website and again the warriors I think reached out to their mailing list as well so and we are this information from the website I just want to acknowledge this is not on or if from the open house is not on our website yet I had really hoped to have it up there by now but we are going to have it up by Tuesday of next week we're going to have this PowerPoint up and we're going to also have the PDFs of all the documents that were at the open house so that we can open up that online comment forum for a few weeks before we are heading to city council with comments so so that's yeah is that kind of answer your question? Yeah, I mean I just want to get kind of a that the time the public could actually interact and provide feedback it was like overall those different components it was two to three months where they could actively provide feedback for you is that about right? I would say it will be two months by the time we after we open the online because it's not it's not available online yet I don't want to pretend it has been so we'll have it up for three weeks now starting early next week so yeah it'll hit right around the two month mark okay so at this point the community has only had about a month or month and a half to actually provide feedback for them Sure, yeah I mean I would say that's pretty typical of a planning process you know we have community workshops we collect feedback you know offering this stuff online now is something we've started doing in the last few years and does allow a few more weeks for folks who can't make it to those in-person events to you know read about it provide comment get involved yeah Great, okay thanks I think I saw commissioner Ms. C. D. Miller then commissioner Kennedy and then commissioner Greenberg go ahead commissioner Ms. C. D. Miller Thank you for that presentation really great job I really appreciate the clarity with which you explain some complex things so thank you really great job I just a few questions one is about the rena numbers there was some conversation about the consequences of failing to meet our rena numbers I'm not sure I fully understood it I'm wondering if it would be too much to you know like is there a summary way to think about it that if we fail to meet our rena numbers then one, two, three things happen you know Yeah okay sure I'll see if I can I can do that I might ask Matt VanWatt to support so first of all there's two components of this rena so that's for anyone who's not familiar with that acronym that's the regional housing needs allocation that is the obligation the city has for housing over an eight year period of time so there are two parts of that obligation the first and this is the piece that we have had for decades is the obligation to plan for capacity that for that many housing units that that many housing units can get built and that they can get built for the lower income components that they can get built at the right density to qualify under the state's um determination of you know equating density to affordability which we know in California is like kind of challenging argument to justify and that's the way that the state law is written um so we have an obligation to plan for rena if we don't plan enough housing if we don't identify enough sites to meet our rena that state will not certify our housing element of our general plan if we don't have a certified housing element there are lots of state funding mechanisms that the city is not eligible for that includes transportation funding it obviously includes I think it also includes affordable housing funding um and there are probably other things I'm not a complete expert on that and that's not something we intend to find out about we intend to plan for the obligation that we've been um that we will be assigned again these numbers aren't final yet and we have no reason to believe they're going to shift very much before from the current draft so um the other piece is do we actually build enough to meet that obligation do we make adequate progress and that is not something that the city completely controls because that relies on private developers it relies on the cost of land the cost of lumber the cost of labor right we don't control those things it relies on are their developers even working in the area are there enough construction workers all of the things right all of that stuff um making adequate progress means you know making like proportional progress towards those goals and they check in um once in the middle of the housing element cycle and once at the end of the housing element cycle to see if you're making adequate progress and um if you are making adequate progress in um in your market rate housing at that check-in then you are then you land at least into the tier of sp35 that's requires that developments be 50 percent affordable so you're in sort of a more a higher what am I trying to say it's a higher level of um challenge that a developer faces to get a sp35 application if we're meeting if we're building enough um of market rate housing then sp35 applications are limited to 50 percent affordable projects so that's the tier we're in now if we're not making adequate progress on meeting that market rate housing then we are in a 10 percent tier which means any projects that provides 10 percent of the housing for low income households is eligible for that sp35 streamlining and again I say any project not in the coastal zone has to be you know existing urban development there are a couple of qualifiers and we would see many more of those those types of applications which are extremely streamlined and exempt from sequa so um and if we can meet our entire arena if we're making adequate progress in every income category then we are not subject to sp35 and that would be amazing we actually are on track if we can get our very low income units that are in the pipeline if we can get them to pull building permits by the end of next year we'll be in that position for the first four years of our next housing element cycle which would be refreshing at least for staff right processing all these applications and you know I think hitting that adequate progress milestone is is a challenge and it's you know I think we're going to be in a different place in the end of 2027 we'll just we'll have to see how far we can get that was a lot of words did I answer your question yeah I know that I think that that that explained it really well thank you so much okay a little bit confused about the ramifications of failing to meet the number I kind of understood but the progress is a little bit fuzzy for me so thank you for covering it really really good job a couple other questions commissioner sorry sorry to interrupt I just wanted to add one thing to to Sarah's comments as well sure go ahead just in in relation to planning for those units through that housing element process those rena units that we're going to be receiving the the city has to adequately show where those units can be built if it can do that the housing element process would include a rezoning where we'd actually have to show that we're going to rezone properties to allow that additional capacity so the big thing we're thinking here is you know not just for this next rena cycle but even for future ones as well you know the more housing units we can add to this area now the less rezoning we have to do elsewhere in the city potentially not any and you know given the contentiousness of other areas and you know people you know having the more housing closer to neighborhoods and things like that you know this just seems like an area that's ideal for for more units than other places thank you kind of that's kind of just ties right into my next question you which you may have just answered but let me let me just repeat it so that I make sure I get it answered if if we don't plan for the housing units in our downtown in this project area downtown project area what then happens to other areas of the city we still let's just say we'll pick the 3700 unit number because that's what we have to work with and so I'm just gonna pick a number here you know 1700 units we find in downtown we still have a plan for 2000 units somewhere else in the city is that right well yeah so so we would start the first step of the housing element is to sort of analyze what's the existing capacity in our general plan and under our zoning code because we do have some existing capacity right so we've built a lot of housing our general plan has a lot more capacity right like so we can count all the sites on the corridors that don't have entitlements we can count those towards showing we have adequate sites right so that's when when Matt says potentially not any if we can there is a universe in which we can plan for enough housing in this project area that for this housing element cycle we have enough capacity elsewhere in our general plan between this project and then the other existing capacity right and so then in this cycle we wouldn't be in a position of meeting to rezone and it's just that I think we're close to that you know that edge of like are we going to have to find a little bit more to rezone or not and unfortunately you know just the timing of the housing element is that you know that's starting in several more months to like really dig in and do that full analysis of what's the remaining capacity in our general plan right okay thanks a couple of the questions the I really like the idea of the the overlook you know at the top of cliff street I thought that was a really attractive feature of the plan and I'm wondering it didn't appear that that was selected as a viewpoint for the different scenarios or that I missed something or no yeah no we didn't model that directly that would have been see we should have talked to you first that would have been yeah interesting to do maybe if I can just explain yes please it's it's a little hard to see because of the way the vegetation is and and the hillside you can you can kind of get a peek of you view down to the river but you can't really see more to the left if you will oh no I I know the spot I you know I've been in a I've been intrigued by yeah and we certainly can do a view from there I just was I'm just thinking when I remember being up there it's it's a little hard to see all the way around if you will but it is certainly we can do a simulation view it is it is hard to see all the way around but you know those views that have vegetation in the in the way can be modified yeah absolutely yeah so I'm wondering so that's not a view that was represented and I'm I would love to see that view it's good you know before the public sees it online or whatever it might be useful to have at least a view looking north you know back towards downtown from from there okay so I I didn't miss anything and that might be something we can see in the future shading effects I'm I'm wondering when you thought about these buildings at you know 160 feet 200 feet whatever was there any shading studies done and and and were those well where were they done though we haven't done those yet no okay is that is that something that gets done at some point in time or I mean I assume we'll do that as part of the environmental impact report yeah so um I'm actually not sure if shade is a secret issue bill do you have any insight on that are you talking to me I'm thinking no I was I was going to ask bill or be to weigh in on whether shading shade is a secret issue hi good afternoon or evening commissioners leave out their director of planning and community development and different cities handle that different ways and I can check and see while we're talking here and confirm the approach that we take but I know that oftentimes the shade is only a significant impact if it is related to shading a public park for example and that's the only I'm trying to think back through the projects that I've dealt with and that's the only instance where I've seen shade as a significant impact Eric is on the line here he may know how we what our threshold of significance is yeah Eric more of that shading isn't hasn't been a secret issue with us here we do have some very very big general policies on design permits regarding shading but they're not objectives so they're they're difficult to enforce but not a secret issue okay and then I wanted to add to just as far as shading impacts go you know shade generally the largest impact is to the to the north of those properties from the south sun which in this case would all be the downtown area which is all north and in these these areas and then also the idea behind doing these more narrow tower elements really really narrows the amount of shade or shortens the amount of shade time you know with the passing sun versus like a wider squat building so that that's another thing to consider as well thank you sir last question on front street I like the idea of having spruce street gradually slope up to the top of the levee I'm curious and I and I appreciated you know offering us a profile that illustrated that but I'm also curious about what happens on front street as you go down front street over newly raised spruce street I don't know what the elevation how much higher than front street it would be now but what would happen to front street as you go up over a raised spruce street and then back down the front street I'm just wondering if there was a profile cut along front that would illustrate that yeah so I met Thompson might weigh in on this drawing since he drew that profile and and I think this that that alignment that we showed of like basically a flat transition to the levee does assume that they're sort of like wholesale redevelopment on a bunch of these parcels so that that whole road is like so you're not just hitting a bump going over spruce street right so that more of the road is reconstructed and raised up to meet it Nathan it looks like you have something you want to add there yet Nathan when city engineer city of Santa Cruz yeah you bring up a great point commissioner city mill there the slope that's being proposed right now I believe is less than 5% so from pacific avenue up to the levee elevation grade would be again less than 5% and then the roadway itself on front street would have to slope up you know if you're going north that on front you'd have to climb up to that intersection up front and spruce and then it would go back down to meet the existing elevation of Lowell street so yeah that's a good catch okay thank you so that so somebody did think about that and there would be a rise to the spruce street intersection great those were my questions thank you all right kicking it over to commissioner Kennedy and Mr. Greenberg you're on deck this is so exciting to see this all coming together down here with all the work that's gone into downtown so I have three questions on the arena location I know in the past there's been discussions involving the civic and like some attempts to talk to the seaside company about this but is there any what's the updated status on any of those ideas for the arena and are they is it possible or is this the spot I'm not sure I understand what you mean there's been talk there's been conversation about moving the arena to the where the civic is like 10 years ago there's some thoughts about a combo thing like when we were talking about the original warrior's dome I see okay so that kind of predates my tenure with the city and at this point we're not talking about that we're talking about looking for a site within this project area and really based on the geometry that's necessary for an arena there's really two locations so they can stay where they are or they can go to that more center block and so has there ever been interest or discussions with the seaside company on their big parking lots at the beach yeah right across on boardwalk wouldn't that be a great spot for an arena but I don't know okay I'm sorry I don't have those conversations project area here yeah okay that's I mean that's an interesting idea I'll I'll be honest we have not discussed that we've been looking within this project area okay this is me trying to reconstruct these old memories more than a challenge your great work here Sarah so I don't want to see one second for a second I saw Catherine from his hand did you have something you wanted to add Catherine start to interrupt oh yes I I just wanted I just wanted to say that there had been the idea that something might be done with the auditorium and the civic auditorium and there were some studies done and it was basically going to be more expensive than and not very successful it just it it wasn't going to pan out and that was probably I don't know between five and ten years ago okay thanks it's coming back to me it this it's not there's not a room there if I remember right exactly yeah so my second question and I worked a lot on the the downtown plan extension and one of my kind of ongoing concerns with all the good work we did on that plan and moving down into this area is that levy area and the new land we create is just so sensitive in terms of the environment and people living there and all the issues we see by the river walk so my question is I think we'd well before I ask the question we do a pretty good job kind of unifying all that but has there ever been a thought of like a unified river plan for the levy you know to just bring all those parts together I see each area plan doing it separately but has that ever been grown out there or thought about or is there a grant we can go get for that we do have a San Lorenzo the Slurp San Lorenzo urban river plan that and actually that's I should mention that's another component of you know the this area is that there are some policies I mean and I'm not super familiar with the Slurp right now but my sense is that it's pretty high level and it's really focused on environmental resources maybe Eric knows actually really so there is a plan that addresses the river and you're right it's not like the strongest the area plans seem to govern in terms of land development and so each one of them sort of like tries to address this in their own way yeah that's what we have now okay my intent with that is just that these spaces become awesome civic spaces and like I'll get to discussion later okay so my last question has to do with energy use and I really you know like generally I'm in favor of big buildings and housing and I know when you kick up to a tower that's mainly stealing glass it becomes a whole different scenario for energy use so I understand this is planning and not the energy code or building but I would like to ask if anyone has analyzed or thought about district wide energy solutions for a a plan area like this and the example I'd like to cite is you know the sales force tower in san francisco the huge one it's an office building it has an effective r value of the envelope of three so it's basically as thermally efficient as an old 16 you know middle ages stone building so that building is a huge radiator to just like burn energy and put it out and into the atmosphere and so I think it's worth thinking about district energy on a on a project area like this and perhaps that's something that could be incentivized down the road with one of those developer agreements you know there's a lot of stuff happening in this field and I just want to put it on the table and say it's a big concern of mine yeah okay well let's discuss that more when we get to discussion because I do think that's really I mean now's the time to bring that kind of thing up Matt did you have something you wanted to add yeah just in terms of your comments on the steel commissioner cross laminated timber is something that's going to be added to the california building code in this coming update which really allows wood construction buildings to go much higher even as high as like 18 stories and it's it's even higher and you know other places around the world but that's what it would be in california so that's something we're also seeing you know in terms of being able to build you know more green and higher than the seven eight stories that's able to right now under wood construction great point matt thank you you sequestered some carbon doing that too okay let's go ahead and move to Mr. Greenberg and before I go to Mr. Greenberg I just want to say that that my intent is also to allow the public to comment even though this isn't an action item and I just want to for the folks who have hung in there this long keep on hanging in there we'll we'll get to you in a second go ahead to Mr. Greenberg okay thanks commissioner Dawson and thank you so much to the planning stuff and Sarah Noisy and everyone for an amazing very inspiring and exciting plan and I'm wondering about whether there's been consideration about the impact that this new development around a big arena and all the investment that's going in and all the new housing that's going in the impact on raising land values and gentrification and displacement in the surrounding areas adjacent to the downtown as well as potentially even within the the planned area and any thinking that's going on about displacement yeah for sure that's a really important issue so thank you for bringing that up I hope we'll discuss it more when we get to the discussion session section so at this point the the thinking has been that you know this is an issue that we're going to have to address and think about so we're also operating under a couple of assumptions so the first assumption being that you know California state law continues to require relocation of existing tenants and replacement of any existing housing that is occupied by a lower income household with a first right of return into an equivalent unit so any direct displacement would have to be sort of accommodated under state law and replaced you know with with those tenant services so we're operating under that assumption and we are also currently at this point operating under the assumption that the city's inclusionary requirement would apply at 20% in this area and that's where we've started in terms of making our baseline assumptions and that is a place where we expect to have more comment and feedback from the commission from the public from the city council okay and I have some some more thoughts on that and so yeah there's the distinction between direct and indirect displacement so so in terms of indirect displacement at this point we have not spent a lot of time thinking about how we could address that and I think it's a really good point okay thanks and and related to Rina actually I'm just wondering the degree to which preservation of existing affordable housing is ever considered perhaps not because they want to increase and or conversion of market rate housing to affordable housing so I actually I think I will let Catherine answer that when she does her presentation because I know there are specific ways that they talk about you know rehab units counting you can count in the Rina and certain units that you like preserve in specific ways can count but I don't think it's like blanket across the board Catherine do you want to share something now yeah I can I can address that Sarah is exactly right there there are methods that you can use to allow preserved units to count towards your Rina but it's a little bit it's a little draconian the process of doing that and we have not done it in the past partially because although our housing department works really well with the developer or the property owners to get those continued that those agreements often they're on a relatively short term like a five year term and so every five years they go through another agreement and it's not I don't remember the number off the top of my head but HCD wants a longer term than that before they will count it as an affordable unit so I see so it would have to be to you know just something that's like deed restricted like a conversion yeah have to be or the term I mean it wouldn't necessarily if they were a developer agreement it might be a loud but it would have to be like a 55 year term and usually with these rehab they're just not that long term okay so thanks and interested and just thank you for that and interested in questions of preservation and and you know preventing displacement and so forth in surrounding areas and perhaps other ways of building up arena in the broader area so thanks okay um again members of the public we're almost there one more commissioner here commissioner shifrinz go ahead with your questions and then we'll open to the public for some comment well I do have a number of questions so I I appreciate appreciate the fact that I'm closing other people to wait I have a question about the connectivity proposal which I thought was very good but I wonder why the city why the proposal seems to retain the commitment to palm trees it seems to me that if if if we want the people to walk from the beach to the downtown on a hot day to provide trees that provide no shade seems counterproductive I know we have this Miami beach or somehow this some beach mythology about palm trees but it seems to me that they really are not conducive to encouraging people to walk and so I just wonder what is the logic behind continuing to see that the way to get connectivity is visually with palm trees rather than with actual helping people by encouraging people to walk so that's certainly you know a fair comment to make I think you know our thinking just initially was to replicate some of the existing streetscape which does include palms in that neighborhood you know if we want to take it in a different direction that's certainly comment that we can you know absolutely act on okay it's a pet peeve of mine having tried to walk between those two locations many times and that very unadurable well my next question has to do with the concern I tend to have with the plan and it sort of relates to Commissioner Kennedy's as I understood the question about the sailor and the river plan which is the city seems to have a tendency to do these very beautiful plans that never get implemented and one of the problems I see is financial feasibility a number of the proposals in this the plan before us for that sort of civic improvements seem to me to be quite expensive and I just wonder if I know you know on the one hand we're doing a general plan in but since we're so worried about the housing component I wonder why we're not equally as worried about the financial component because to have a plan that's kind of that looks good but it's never going to be the public improvements are not going to be implemented because there's no way to finance them it seems kind of productive so I guess my question is is it going to be any financial analysis of the civic improvements that are being proposed in the in the plan so I might ask Bill to weigh in on that I think as we have it scoped right now I don't know that specifically a financial analysis is part of that scope like to that level is that I think that's right Bill is that right no we no we have a scope we've got EPS involved in the project and they're gonna look they have it scoped to look at at high level so it'd have to be orders of magnitude costs type of analysis but also just the general financial feasibility of the project and how that might carry forward I think the other component of that is discussions with the warriors and what their intent is and then you know Sarah's been talking about the potential for a development agreement so there's probably a lot of components to that to what's possible and I appreciate your comments about whether or not a plan is feasible or not at this stage we're trying to lay out a vision and then that's going to now get refined and and hold back so this is the right time to be able to start to do that but there will be a EPS is going to look at financial feasibility thank you great thanks thanks bill I had a conversation with staff earlier today and many of my questions got answered so one of the questions I asked and I don't know whether we've been able to get the answer to it was how many affordable housing units are going to be did not demolish in order to relocate the Laurel Street extension so yeah so I did get a chance to follow up on that that is a board and care facility that has 48 beds and provides round-the-clock care for folks that need supportive services essentially and so and I think as we had talked about in you know when we met the relocation of the roadway assumes that that facility has been replaced or relocated either within the project area or elsewhere in the county right so we could have we would have to have language in the plan that really talked about phasing and you know said that this vision of relocating the roadway shall not happen until such time as you know this facility is relocated and replaced and all of the you know existing tenants are adequately provided for the care that they need so you know there are ways that we could do that and the opportunity of eventually relocating that road would really allow like slightly larger building footprints on those two northern parcels if we can recapture that Laurel Street extension so yeah at this point we want to keep it in there sort of like the high-level vision and receive more feedback about it and you know we recognize that that facility is crucial in the county and would have to be replaced or relocated I'm going to have some comments about it but I appreciate the answer to my question at this point another question I asked this morning had to do with could the same number or the question is how high would the building how what would have to fall how many stories would the proposed identity housing structures need to be if the power the power elements were eliminated in other words we sort of saw that in the baseline but then we started moving into you know these big towers and I from the you know the staff presentation it seems clear that to achieve the same number of units we do it probably be necessary to go above the high-level the high-level in the existing downtown but it wouldn't be necessary to go over 20 stores and so I'm wondering if the site as a whole the whole site was used for development of the housing as it is other sites how how many stories would the would the new developments have to be to achieve the same number of units Justin do you have any insight that you could offer about that sorry I'm not quite sure I understood the question it was it was looking for a parallel without parallel unit count without going to without using towers so if we build the other high heights if we built blocks instead of towers for those same number of units what kind of building heights are we talking about what from a from sort of a practical limitation and building code standpoint that the buildings are going to reach about a seven-story height as a maximum and that's kind of the limits of wood construction kind of the economics of of the building and development so I would I would if I'm understanding correctly that that I think that would be and that that's consistent with how the existing downtown plan is written and what heights are are allowed there I think that's that's more or less what's driven kind of a 75 to 85 foot height I'm not sure if I'm understanding so no I'm not I guess I'm not being clear the plan scenario two and three pretty high towers and there is a whole schema an urban design schema to justify why that's be a potentially appropriate way to go well if you don't want to have those towers the community doesn't want to have those towers how could we achieve how high would the building have to go in order to achieve the same number of units that are in this scenario such that scenario two over 1600 units now it has some tower towers that if I understand it correctly go up to like 18 stories or 19 stories what if what what is an alternative approach to receiving to achieving those 18 those 1600 units without having buildings that are significantly higher than anything else that's been seen in Santa Cruz so if we were to blank at the area at a consistent height is that the question instead of so now if you're just using the high density sites right so if we took those 1600 units or even like let's just pick the whatever the numbers that fits on blocks ABCD right and instead of having towers we imagine a world where CLT can go much higher and we can build wood construction to higher heights would the whole would all of those blocks go to 100 feet would they go to 120 feet rather than having a 200 foot tower element that's the question yeah we can certainly we can certainly plug it into the model and study it pretty quickly if it would if it would be of interest I just you know it kind of from a from a back of the envelope I'm I'm guessing it would instead of having everything at seven stories with some things that go up to a to a much higher you'd have a consistent and and 10 story blanket of development which which can feel pretty monolithic I mean if you if you were to go you know that the the human perception is of that that street wall at the top and and there's something about that kind of six to seven story height limit it's just kind of a classical urban fabric you know that's what you see in Paris that's what you see in other parts of kind of classically developed cities and you know there's there's limitations too and some of those about how many flights of stairs people were willing to walk up before their elevators there's their whole whole host of considerations that make it practical to go to a certain height and more difficult to go above that but I'm I'm just guessing it would be you know you'd see everything at 10 stories something like that if I if I'm understanding you now correctly and we could we could dial into that and and explore okay well that's a I mean that's my question I'll have comments about it as well I mean going up 20 taking an elevated up 20 stories has its issues is my mind with other issues I want to clarify what we can do here tonight the chair indicated that we're that this isn't an action item my understanding though is that if the commission wants to take action it is able to do so it's not listed in the agenda as an information item it's in elicited general business is there any impediment to the commission making a recommendation on what it would recommend to the city council as a preferable alternative so there's not and in fact you know if if there is a general consensus around that that could be illustrated by way of a motion we would welcome that because that's just a really easy way to bring that formal feedback of a majority of members to the city council okay so whatever elements you would want to incorporate into a motion about what the the preferred scenario should incorporate that would be helpful thank you that's how I that's how I understood it as I understanding the discussion of the rena numbers they is a there are a total number of units of something like 3,800 it's 3700 units it's going to be the total but they're broken down into categories by various income levels am I is that not correct yes that's correct and if I'm understanding the the chart and the graph and we talked about this this morning about a third of the units are in the low-income and very low-income category so the in this in this period of time under this housing current housing element we've been very successful in exceeding the total rena numbers and that's largely because we've had many more both mockery units than were allocated or than the target was we've had a much harder time achieving a low-income and particularly the very low-income units and so I just wonder if any thought is given to requiring that the density that the new units that are going to be proposed through this expansion area meet the same distribution that is considering the numbers applying such a big role in our thinking about meeting this density then in fact there should also be the commitment of meeting the low and lower income the lower income requirements as well is that as any consideration of that thing yeah so as I as I mentioned when I was answering Commissioner Greenberg's question the our assumption at this point is that the city's existing inclusionary would apply and you know that's sort of our baseline assumption and that's an area where we you know there's certainly other options that we can look at and comments on on that topic would you know we can take those under consideration I you know financial feasibility being a reality that is something that we you know will want to think about carefully and I know that you know the warriors have said they're interested in having a privately funded development they've said that in the past and I think that part of the way that they are going to get there is by capturing some of the value from the housing development I don't know all of the mechanisms that they're intending to use on that and you know you'd have to ask them how that works and you know that is kind of one of the goals is making sure the arena can work and that the housing can work so like all of that is sort of in the meilu here and you know just to reiterate let's talk about that I think that's a that's a really good topic to add to the discussion and you know something that we can certainly take a look at it's a fascinating but confusing thought that the arena the warriors that own no property by somehow going to get a financial benefit from development on property owned by somebody else but as you say we can talk about that at another time I had a question about the sort of worries around SB 35 and oh my god you know we may have 10% there's and I thought it's somehow going to move the city's discretion of the housing development one of the things I've learned on the planning commission is the city has almost no discretion over any housing developments anyway under SB 330 and the what's the other thing that we have to meet the the city can only use objective standards and the it can't make a housing project infeasible by its requirements and so we've the city is already under recent state laws extremely limited in its ability to regulate and approve but not approve or even condition new housing developments and as we saw at least having listened to some of the city council meetings on the SB 35 project that went through the the process the city can impose in main that it's not the project won't go through SQL but that city can impose objective standards so I'm not sure that you know obviously it would be good to meet the the the reading targets but the idea that somehow SB 35 is going to put us I don't understand why given the other limitations on city's expression why SB 35 is going to be that much different than what oh I remember what my other thing is most of the sites that are being developed are are going to be justified on the SQL exemptions they're not going to be subject to SQL anyway because they're transit oriented they're infill so there's a real question whether there's going to be any SQL review anyway so why this particular concern under a ballot SB 35 yeah so Mr. Schiff I said hold hold hold on a second Sarah I'm going to hold that I think we're bearing into the discussion realm and I want to be conscientious of the members of the public who have hung in for two plus hours so I think that we'll have plenty of time and we will be sure to come back to a discussion around SB 35 but I do want to open the public hearing and allow the folks who have hung in there for two plus hours to provide us with some information that can help inform our discussion and our possible recommendation tonight so we'll go ahead and open the public hearing and I do see a hand and thank you so much Anna for hanging in for a long long time you'll go ahead and have three minutes and uh we would love to hear your comments thank you hi good evening can you hear me okay great yeah hi my name is Anna Gerger my I guess my name is on the screen now I actually live on cliff street so I'm thrilled to be hearing about this from a commissioner I was kind of surprised not to have heard about it before because there's not a lot of us on this cul-de-sac it's just my house on the corner big pink house some town houses next to me and then Elview Motel across the street excited to hear about the downtown improvements improving you know the corridor between downtown and the beach and the boardwalk and also I appreciate somebody Bill Wiseman mentioning that view and you know perhaps that sort of ceremonial connection that you all brought up because it is really beautiful at the top of those stairs I think a lot could be done there I have heard a rumor I don't know if it's true about that huge tree right there being actually a native burial site I don't know if it's true my mom's had for years ideas of art and music dance performances around there being a good idea for community engagement and tourism as well as along the river in any case I'm also speaking on behalf of my parents who also are on cliff street and they're also business owners they run Cliff Crest Inn which is a 1880s Victorian formerly the home of Lieutenant Governor William Jeter so from the same era of that Golden Gate villa that was mentioned earlier just real quick traffic safety pedestrian you know foot traffic etc currently in this cul-de-sac it's a lot of police and crime activity a car has literally gone off the end of the cul-de-sac down the stairs two three times in the last couple years so some safety improvement is needed and really my big interest here is better car and pedestrian flow and solutions for the traffic flow to and from the beach one huge concern is parking of course which you know leads me also to mention better shuttling maybe really well advertised and labeled shuttles to downtown restaurants for example so people aren't also stuck eating just at boardwalks snack shacks and war restaurants the comment of palm trees from commissioner shifrin to crack me up because pjne has actually removed all the palm trees on my property so I just want you to be aware of that they were too close to the power lines or something so do keep in mind you know some other type of trees or shading illumination unique illumination ideas I love hearing that as long as as residents here can still sleep at night I think that's a great idea we also have a huge garbage problem so if you're going to increase pedestrian or you know car traffic we really need a garbage solution I called the city about this before never heard back there's not even a public garbage can on this corner and it's a huge throughway for locals whether residents or transients and for tourism we're talking about you know dirty diapers and the like also so in terms of sustainability to keep that in mind there's going to be an increase in garbage and public bathroom perhaps even scenario three you mentioned I think up to 160 feet in a building D I think I'm just wondering would that impact the view from the top of cliff street that we were talking about something to consider one commissioner mentioned that that view wasn't really you know we didn't see that in the the plants so I just wanted to second that thought and I think I've gone through everything and I'm sorry if I went over three minutes but I I took notes and hopefully hit everything that I wanted to mention thank you for listening thank you so much Anna you definitely deserve just much time as you needed for the two hours plus so this is going to be the last call and I'm going to give it a second here for any members of the public to go ahead and raise your hand if you would like comment do that by pressing star nine on your phone and looks like we've got another hand so please everybody go ahead and put your hands up if you would like to speak and we can go ahead and unmute the caller with the last three numbers nine to nine go ahead caller hello good evening my name is Brian Shields I'm a field rep for Carpenters Local 505 and Aptos and first of all I want to say that the plan is very impressive and the amount of thought that's been put into it and the total amount of how long it's going to take to get to where there's actually ground being broken is the work that's going into it is impressive but one of the things I wanted to say as far as being a community benefit I'm a resident of Santa Cruz County and and having we have over 500 members that live here in Santa Cruz County and so being able to put those people to work on this project is an important aspect of having this this project built so I just wanted to add that in sorry I'm a little jumbled up late for me have a good night thank you so much for your comments we really appreciate you know hanging in there and and thank you okay last call for any public comments you can raise your hand star nine going one going twice I see Anna's hand again and I feel like I have an inclination to let her go ahead and talk one more time so we'll go ahead and let Anna have another couple minutes so Anna this time you'll have two minutes go ahead and thank you thank you thank you I don't even need that much I just looked at my notes and I forgot one big thing I did I said something about parking but I would like to expand just a little bit as a resident you know who lives three blocks from the boardwalk I'm actually trapped at my house on weekends and during the summertime or any time there is a holiday weekend and what I mean by that is I can't even go to Trader Joe's without having to spend an hour in the car on the way back so you know of course more environmentally you know yes I can walk and I can take my e-bike which is what I do that's the solution but I just want to bring that up because you know we are residents here the the sign on Cliff Street around the my parents bed and breakfast says that it's residential only but that's not enforced I mean let's be real that's the main that's the main way people get from Ocean Avenue they snake up Third Street and go left on Cliff Street right so it's just I really just hope that you're taking into consideration I'm sure you are studies about traffic flow impact on the residents and it's just not to mention environment so again I want to emphasize shuttling I know there's a shuttle from the city hall but I just don't think it's very well known or advertised it may even need to be advertised on highway 17 so that people coming in actually know more about it they can prep for it they're ready for it and and then again I wanted to add you know adding some sort of a shuttle system that gets people downtown so it's not only through that Cliff Street way that's all thank you all right thanks Anna all right see one one more hand up and I'm asking everyone on the line right now to raise their hand because I'm going to close the public hearing so if you want to speak you need to raise your hand now so that we can see how many people are left to speak and it looks like we're going to be going to our last speaker who is Jack McCourt Jack go ahead and identify yourself and you will have three minutes go ahead hey yeah I'm can you hear me yeah go ahead I'm Jack McCourt and I've lived in Santa Cruz my whole life currently live in Boulder Creek but I just want to say that I'm opposed to any parking minimums in this new downtown plan I don't want to see like big building 10-story buildings in the first like three stories of it are just a parking garage or something so that's something I'm really sensitive to that's about it thank you thank you for your comments looks like we have another speaker last two numbers are three go ahead and unmute yourself you will have three minutes number ending in three three go ahead and identify yourself if you choose and you'll have three yeah good evening this is Rob the sound itself I'm sorry I missed most of the presentation but I did have aizer arena that we um were really impressive but what really I guess sort of struck me was that even with the downtown expansion you know the tallest building the most dense in order to accommodate all of the regional housing needs allocations that we have to plan for in the sixth cycle so I just encourage the city to you know really think big because you know if we can't put all of the housing in Santa Cruz downtown but if people don't want you know large apartment buildings in single family neighborhoods and and people talk about wanting to have housing downtown this is how we have more housing in places where we don't need to have cars and where we can have improve and I agree with the previous caller so I'd like to see elimination of parking minimums for for these for the projects so that we can have more transit oriented development in places like downtown where people don't need to drive as much so I encourage the city to to think most aggressively with the EIR that doesn't assume that you know that the highest biggest projects will necessarily go for but it means that that will be prepared and will have the environmental impact research done beforehand so that that we know what is what can be achieved and and how it can be that it can happen so encourage you all to think big and that's that's how we're going to meet the housing needs that our community thank you very much okay thank you for members of the public who hung around I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back before the commission for discussion so I see commissioner shifrin's hand up so if you have comments go ahead and I will have comments but I'll I'll wait I'll hang this up for my questions Chair Dawson yeah before we start could I ask that Sarah just put that slide up with the six things you wanted input on or say them again just so I can give you the input you're looking for I wrote them down pretty quick yeah sure maybe Bill can help me find that slide and pull it back up but in general we're looking for a targeted number of housing units sort of like some kind of range or ballpark that we can focus on we want to talk about that proposed realignment and circulation so moving the street closing the streets you know temporary closures kind of get input on that the beach connectivity to cliff street we've already heard a couple questions and comments on that obviously building heights are one going to be a component of the conversation looking at those two arena locations is there's any sort of you know consensus around a preferred location we'd like to hear that and then also just comments about civic spaces so locations programming thoughts ideas concerns okay so back to the commission before we move to commissioner shifrin I'd like to go to commissioner greenberg and you mentioned a bit about this direct and indirect displacement and I'm wondering if you could just share with the commissioner and the public the commission and the public just kind of some more information about what that is and isn't what we know about it what other cities are doing about it and I think that would be really helpful as our discussions as we go forward and then we'll go ahead and go to commissioner shifrin next okay thanks commissioner Dawson and I'm going to try to be quick I mentioned to commissioner Dawson that I was interested in this and so and I prepared a few slides and I'm going to try to be really quick just to kind of visualize the location of this development in relation to the surrounding area and some of the debates that are going on in our region and I could share my screen let me see here there we go and I'm going to just so hopefully you can see and I'm just going to go here and basically you know there's this big debate going on how do we balance production of new housing with other kinds of forms of protection of exist of tenants as well as preservation of existing affordable housing and I know we've talked in this body about the work of the urban displacement project and there's a great new study by the urban displacement project housing market interventions and residential mobility in the center scope area which is one of the first studies that really tries to balance an analysis of the impact of new market rate housing with or without the presence of other forms of regulation of the housing market in terms of the degree to which it does or doesn't displace tenants at different levels of affordability and basically the gist of it is that you know yes we need new new supply yes we need new production but at the same time with simply inclusionary zoning you know and those kinds of levels we're going to see a lot of churn we're going to see people moving in at different income levels but most of the people moving out are going to be at the lower income levels and over overall the benefits are going to mostly accrue to upper income levels and this is based on their analysis of the greater Bay Area not including Santa Cruz but I think we're seeing similar levels of vulnerability in our region that we could extrapolate from this kind of a study and I just wanted to say that as a result all across the country in our region people are doing analyses of the impact impacts of new development on displacement and I'm just using stuff on the west coast there's stuff all over the country as well including you know a really thoughtful conversation that happened in the city of Watsonville with their downtown specific plan in EIR and at the bottom of that bullet list you'll see I hope there was a whole advisory committee dedicated to the question of housing policies relating to anti-displacement and so and similarly in San Jose there's this new adopted in 2022 citywide anti-displacement strategy so really this language of how do we think in a holistic way about combining new development new production