Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Can you hear me, please? Can you hear me? Let's be quiet, and we can get started. Actually, we're not going to get started, but we try to start on time. So all I'm doing is announcing to you that the commissioners received some printed correspondence that we do want to go through. So that's why we're not really going to start immediately on time, when we have a nod from all commissioners that they've read this, because we do want to read all correspondence, then we'll get started. I just want to let you know what we're doing for the next few minutes. Go ahead and get settled, and we'll start in just several minutes, probably. Can I have your attention, folks? Can I have your attention, please? We have received three requests from groups. We have received three requests from groups for extra time. So if those representatives from those groups could come to the front and confer with staff, so we can arrange for your extra time, please do that. And I understand it's Clearview Court, HOA, and Save Santa Cruz, and I don't know the third one, so please come up if you've asked for extra time in advance. Two. Is there a third group? Time is up. Andy, you're good to start. Yes? Yeah? Good evening, everyone, and welcome. We will call to order the regular meeting of the City of Santa Cruz Planning Commission meeting for August 15, 2019. I'll ask for a call to order. A roll call, please. Commissioner Schiffrin? Yeah? Conway? Yeah? Spellman? Yeah? Nielsen? Greenberg? Yeah? Singleton? Yeah? Chair Pepe? Present. And Commissioner Nielsen is absent with notification. Are there any statements of disqualification for this evening? Yes. So I'll be recusing myself from the item before us tonight, the public hearing. Back in December of last year, I passed out some flyers that were advocating in favor of this project. Given the quasi-judicial nature of this body and the importance of maintaining a sense of impartiality when reviewing projects and policies, it was inappropriate that I did that. And I take responsibility for that. And because of those reasons, I'll be recusing myself. Anyone else? Now is the segment of our agenda, which is oral communications. We will invite folks who have come here to speak on agenda items to address the commission. But for this section, it's to address the commission for anything that is not on the agenda, but it is part of planning commission business. So I imagine most of you are here to talk about 190 Westcliff, but anyone can come up now and address the commission on anything not on the agenda. Please come up now if you'd like to. Next is approval of the minutes. I would invite a motion to approve the August 1st meeting minutes. So moved. All in favor? Aye. Abstain. Passes unanimously with Vice Chair Spellman abstaining. And the next item on our agenda is a public hearing 190 Westcliff, and we have a staff presentation. Yeah, good evening. Good evening, Chair Pepping, members of the commission. Ryan Bain's going to be given the staff presentation tonight. Also note that with the staff tonight, we have John Barrisoni, who's representing the city attorney's office, Chris Schneider, who's the city traffic engineer and assistant public works director. We have Jessica Mallore from the economic development department, the housing section, and then Stephanie Striello, who prepared the CEQA analysis for this. So they're all available for you to ask questions of, if need be. Also note that we did receive some questions from Commissioner Schifrin, for which we prepared written responses and distributed them to you. We also have provided hard copies over there next to the agenda in case the public would like to review those as well. And then also wanted to note that since the packet went out on Friday, we've continued to receive correspondence, and we've daily posted that correspondence at the end of the business day. So that's been up on the website as well. So with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Ryan. Thanks. Thank you. All right, thanks. So we're looking at 190 West Cliff Drive. In terms of the site location and information regarding the site, it's a 2.2 acre site that's located on the northwest corner of West Cliff Drive and Bay Street intersection. Commercial and residential uses, as you can see, surround the project site. It's founded by Coastview Mobile Home Park on the west and on the north. It'll tell you to the north and east across West Cliff Drive and multi-family townhomes to the south across Bay Street. A mix of visitor serving, commercial and residential areas characterize the beach area to the north of the site and the residential uses generally are found in the area south of the project site. The site is currently an at grade parking, paved parking lot with the associated areas of landscaping that includes some mature trees. There's a total of 55 existing trees on site, 17 of which are heritage, pursuant to city regulations. The project proposal is a four-story mixed-use project consisting of two levels of underground parking, ground level, commercial space, a public plaza and 89 residential condominium. Here's a basic look at the proposed site plan. I'll go into some of the details in a little bit later, but you can kind of see it's somewhat of a U-shaped structure. We have West Cliff Drive. Dream Inn is directly across the street in West Cliff Drive. The plaza, the central coastal passel opens up to West Cliff and opens up to Dream Inn. The commercial uses all face West Cliff Drive and are kind of encased by the residential. I should also note that along to kind of mimic the townhomes that are across Bay Street, there are some multi-level units that face Bay Street. So starting with the general plan designation, it's regional visitor commercial and the designation applies to areas that emphasize a variety of commercial uses that serve Santa Cruz residents as well as visitors. Mixed-use development is strongly encouraged in RBC districts. Specifically, the general plan RBC designation calls out the beach area to, quote, emphasize visitor serving commercial uses such as hotels, motels, restaurants and amusement parks as well as residential and mixed-use developments in the beach area neighborhoods. The general plan also calls out and has a range for the floor area ratio, which is 0.25 to 3.5. The project falls within that range at 2.016. There are quite a list of general plan policies that this project meets. I don't wanna go over all of them, but I'll kind of go over them really quickly. In neighborhoods, near-visitor areas get priority uses that serve both visitors and residents, which this project does. Encourages higher-intensity residential uses and maximize densities. Which this project does. Allow encouraged development that meets the high end of the general plan-use designation density unless constraints associated with site characters and zoning standards require lower density. Allow the following residential uses. This is in regards to density bonus, which is involved in this project. Reduce automobile dependence by encouraging appropriate neighborhood and activity center development. So this is very centralized and the idea is to get people out of their cars and be able to walk. Create pedestrian-friendly frontage and streetscapes and attractive pedestrian-oriented areas. Projects send a good job of that. In terms of economic development policies, the general plan, they wanna support the development and expansion of businesses that make a balanced contribution to the culture, environmental, and economic health city. So this is an expansion of the Dream Inn, which has been a longtime business here in Santa Cruz. Encourage the development of year-round business and then visitor activities. That's gonna be, and also attract and engage local residents. Encourage the development of new lodging facilities. This is basically an expansion of the Dream Inn to have visitor amenities. Encourage the development of fellows that would accommodate conferences and conference goers in conjunction with existing or new hotel development. And coordinate and expand beach area services and employment. So I'm not gonna go through all these, but all of these policies, the project is consistent with. It's also in the beach and south, it's located in the beach and south of Laurel Comprehensive Area Plan. And it's specifically in the beach commercial sub-area of the beach and south of Laurel Plan, which also includes the Boardwalk and several hotels, bed and breakfast and commercial uses that all along beach street and in the area. The beach and south of Laurel Plan indicates that the project provides an opportunity for potential residential development, which this does, it maximizes the development potential of an underutilized site and provides visitor-serving uses. So the project meets all of these beach and south of Laurel Area Plan goals. Here are some other beach and south of Laurel plan goals, which is that the project meets, provides giving opportunities for beach commercial area redevelopment of underutilized land. So this is just a currently a parking lot. So it'll provide attractive retail entertainment, lodging and support uses that will appropriately extend the operational activities of the beach. So this project with this mixed use of residential as well as the ancillary uses for the dream in commercial support this. Develop a comprehensive program to ensure general upgrading of entire beach area lodging inventory. So this is an upgrade to the dream in with ancillary uses being proposed. Multi-level large scale development to optimize use of opportunity sites. That's occurring here, locating parking lots to the rear structures and wherever possible underground or within structures. In this case, the parking is two levels underground or underneath and hidden from view and screened from view. Balconies, terraces, courtyards and similar outdoor spaces to take advantage of use and create street vitality which this project meets all of those. So in terms of zoning, the zoning for the property is Motel residential performance overlay. The purpose stated in the zoning code for this zoning district is to establish and control uses to ensure development which protects neighborhood integrity while supporting appropriate uses. The goal of the district is to limit the future development of Motel or Motel rooms in the district but to allow ancillary hotel support facilities as well as additional residential development. So the project is accomplishing this. Also indoor and outdoor recreation facilities and other facilities related to existing hotel or Motel facilities require a special use permit and are listed as an allowed use with a special use permit in this zoning. And in terms of what's being proposed the ancillary uses for the hotel are fitness gym, spa, restaurants, cafe and small retail components which are very common in today's hotel industry for larger resort hotels. So in terms of just taking a look around the site you can kind of see it's in a somewhat of a transition area. The purple is showing a lot of the commercial and this kind of brownish is residential and so it's right in this kind of transition area between those two general uses. So just taking a quick look at some of the levels of the project. This is parking level two. This is the lowest level. This is for the hotel and commercial overflow parking stalls which will be provided. There's 216 spaces currently on the existing parking lot and there's 217 here. So basically this is replacing the hotel parking. And this would all be valet parking. The next level up for parking, this is all residential. So this is the parking that will be specifically for the 89 units. You can also see that there's storage and bike storage and everything for the residents here. So this is the main level. This is the ground level. It's kind of a U shaped building with access to the project site provided from two new driveways running along both the western and northern permitters of the site. One from West Cliff, the other from Bay Street. The proposed ground floor commercial spaces as well as the Paseo front on West Cliff and are directly across from the Dream Inn. Commercial spaces are an extension of the hotel amenities and include a spa. You can see a spa, fitness gym, retail, cafe and market hall as well as administrative offices for the hotel. While these commercial spaces are designed as amenities for the hotel, they will be open and available for the on-site residences as well as the general public. The central Cospa sale will be a public open space providing indoor and outdoor dining. The indoor outdoor market hall will incorporate outdoor seating for dining on a raised deck facing West Cliff with several different types of seating options. Also toward the rear and within the structure is our 52 commercial retail short-term parking spaces that will be provided and those also electric vehicle charging stations as part of that. Additionally, centrally located is the residential and retail trash enclosures. The second level is basically all residential. There are open space courtyards for the residents both in these locations as well as facing over the Paseo. There's a fitness gym and yoga. Then on the level three, there's a pool deck and residential amenity here and level four are mainly just residences. And then there's also roof decks on the roof. So here's, let's see here. So the project has been designed in a Spanish colonial revival style and is consistent with the previously listed Beach and South Alloral plan design guidelines. The Spanish colonial revival design incorporates a variety of exterior finish materials including white smooth trialed plaster, rammed with walls, synthetic wood, siding and trellises, metal railing systems, brown aluminum windows and decorative exterior lighting. Additionally, this is looking from the Bay Street elevation. The overall building masses is broken up by architectural treatments including decks, trellises and overhangs. Roof top equipment is incorporated into the roof design and screened from adjacent properties and utility installations. I'm sorry to interrupt. Folks, could I ask you to be quiet? Every person here is gonna be invited to speak every single person. People do have trouble hearing, including some of us. So I invite you to please be quiet and respect staff so that you can hear, everyone else can hear. Please honor that, thank you. Go ahead. As I mentioned, utility installations such as the trash enclosures, storage units and parking are designed into the building making them accessible but screened from view. Here's taking a look at the north and as well as the west elevations and here are some site sections. So the maximum height allowed in the zone district, our TB zone district is 36 feet. However, California State Density Bonus Law and the city's corresponding density bonus ordinance provide tools to incentivize affordable housing and or deeper levels of affordability. So one incentive is that applicants can utilize a waiver or modification to development standards that those standards would quote physically preclude construction of the density bonus project. For this project, the applicants are proposing a waiver to the district height. Standard to allow for an additional story bringing the overall height of the building to 47 feet. This height will be similar to the multiple family residential condo complex across the street, which I think you can see here, which is 48 feet. The height will be, so it's gonna be similar to the height of those townhomes. Certainly it falls well below the height of the Dream Inn, which is 83 feet in height. While the neighboring 21 foot tall hotels of the north as well as the mobile homes which are generally 12 feet in height are much smaller in scale. The proposed structure maintains a 25 to 28 foot setback to avoid moving over those neighboring smaller scale uses. There are roof structures that extend above the 47 foot height, including stairway housing for access to roof decks and trellises that house photovoltaic panels. We do have an ordinance that does allow for certain architectural features to exceed the height limit and these stairway and elevator and those types of elements are allowed to exceed the height limit. I should also add that the Beach and South Alora plan guidelines also call for flat roof buildings to incorporate porches, windows, overhangs, trellises, walls, and things like that to avoid bare box appearance. So the stairway housing and trellises would therefore be exempt from the height limitations and follow the Beach and South Alora design guidelines. Just going over it, we kind of went over height a little bit in terms of the density bonus waiver. The project meets all the setback requirements. They're either met or exceeded. Off-Street parking is met and open space requirements are met and there's more details on that than there are standards to have to report. Other standards that are listed actually in the zoning code section are kind of specific to the Beach and South Aloral, which the project meets all of these designed to create plazas and pedestrian spaces. Shade benches, outdoor dining has all of that, articulated wall offsets. So these are all listed in there and I'll meet those requirements. In terms of landscaping, as I mentioned, there are 55 existing trees on the site currently, 17 of which are heritage trees. The project would retain five existing trees in place, including one, I won't go name all of them, but basically there's some very large redwood trees here along Bay Street that would be saved, as well as a tree along West Cliff. And then also there's a Mexican fan palm that would be picked up and relocated to the plaza. There would be 33 new trees planted as part of the project, all 24 or 36 inch box of some larger trees, which would meet the two to one replanting ratio. Other new landscape, there's a detailed landscape plan in your set that throughout the project would be coastal native and regionally adapted with a focus on minimizing water use. So a project traffic analysis was completed by Pinnacle Traffic Engineering, which evaluated impacts to seven intersections. The traffic analysis evaluates impacts with proposed installation of a signal or mini roundabout at the West Cliff and Bay Street intersection, which is included as part of the project. All study intersections are currently operating within acceptable level of service during the weekday PM peak hour, based on city and Caltrans standards, except at the Bay Street and West Cliff drive intersection that currently operates at a level of service E. The West Cliff and Drive Bay intersection would operate at LOS B during the weekday PM peak hour with the installation of a signal and LOS A to B with installation of a mini roundabout. The city's public works department requested a qualitative evaluation of the pros and cons of traffic signal control versus a mini roundabout. And while both alternatives would meet the objectives of improving the level of service for that intersection, public work staff is recommending the installation of a mini roundabout based on several reasons, a few of them being reduced flows and delays, slower but more consistent traffic flow. They feel it's safer than a signal, a better pedestrian experience where you don't have pedestrians grouping and waiting for a signal and then less greenhouse gas emissions from cars sitting and waiting. In terms of what's involved with this proposed project, there's a design permit, coastal permit, special use permit, the density bonus, an encroachment permit and a tentative map. So those are what we're all considering tonight. We already discussed a lot about the design of the project, so I'll move on to the coastal permit. So the project is located in the coastal zone overlay and shoreline protection overlay districts. In terms of the coastal, the project will not affect coastal views because the property is located on the inland side of West Cliff Drive. It's not visible from the wharf under existing conditions due to the existing dream in hotel, which borders the shoreline and stands between the wharf and the project site. The project site is not located within any sensitive natural habitat or resource areas as mapped in the general plan and the local coastal program. It includes a plaza that will be open to the public, permitting public access to the site that is currently a private parking lot, improved street alignment, sidewalk widening, bike lane improvements and the addition of a roundabout will all improve public access to the coast. The proposed expansion of the hotel, ancillary facilities will provide new visitors, serving amenities, providing food and retail uses for visitors, the new residents of the development, as well as existing residences in the West Cliff area. Due to its location in the beach area, the project will draw visitors to tourist destinations along the coast, including the boardwalk and the wharf. And so as proposed, the project is consistent with applicable policies of the local coastal program, which seeks to minimize the impact of development and coastal resources and provide visitor serving in the beach area. As I mentioned, a special use permit is required for indoor and outdoor recreation facilities in the RTB zoning. The purpose of considering a special use permit is to ensure the proper integration of essential or desirable uses. And the project is consistent with the 2030 general plan and the beach and south of Lower Plain that we had kind of gone over already, providing visitor serving uses and maximizing the development on this infill site. Taking all these into consideration, because use incorporated in the project will not constitute a nuisance or be detrimental to public welfare of the community. Our density bonus. So to address California's needs for affordable housing, the state enacted the density bonus law to encourage the provision of affordable housing units by offering a combination of benefits to developers. The amount of the density bonus is based on the number of affordable units at each income level that are provided by the project. So to determine whether a project qualifies for a density bonus, the percentages of affordable units is based on the maximum number of units that would be permitted under the city's zoning code. And in this case, the base density is 66 units. So the project provides a higher amount of affordable units or units at deeper levels of affordability are entitled to a range of increases in density, ranging from 5% to 35%. Increase in the total number of units that are allowed. The additional units help offset the increased costs associated with the increased number of more deeply affordable units. So in addition to allowing more market rate units to offset the costs of the affordable units the law also provides a variety of tools that applicants can utilize to make projects physically and more economically feasible, including a waiver or modification to development standards that would physically preclude it. Construction of the density bonus project. So in this case, they're requesting the height waiver which we discussed earlier. So by committing to making eight of the 66 units affordable to very low income households and then two low income units, it's eligible for a 35% density bonus based on state density bonus law. So with the 35% density bonus, the project can accommodate 89 total residential units that obviously includes the eight very low and the two low. State density bonus law does limit cities somewhat their discretion when reviewing density bonus applications and cities are generally obligated to grant a density bonus and incentives, concessions, waivers to development standards so long as the proposed development complies with the applicable affordable requirements. As I mentioned, encroachment permit is being also part of this for instruction of the roundabout or signal as well as a number of improvements. There's gonna be a major realignment, a lot of major, but an improvement in terms of the realignment along West Cliff Drive. So they'll be maintaining two southbound lanes on West Cliff Drive at Bay Street. There's stop controls for the driveways. They'll be widening the sidewalk on the east side of West Cliff Drive, widening the existing mid block crosswalk pedestrian refuge island and also including some rapid flashing beacons, installation of green bike lane, undergrounding of utilities and installation of street lights. A tentative map is also included as part of this proposal. These are for sale airspace condominiums, so that is part of the tentative map. It meets all the subdivision ordinance requirements and there'll be CCNRs that are gonna be subject to review and approval. There were two community meetings that were held, the first on December 3rd and the second on July 10th. The community meetings were attended by the project development team, several city staff members and members of the Planning Commission subcommittee. There were approximately 150 members at the December meeting and approximately 60 at the July meeting. Formal comments were submitted by the public at the meetings and city staff noted key issues raised during the meeting and those are all listed in your staff report. In addition to the community meetings as part of our outreach policy, we have a project webpage that was created on our city website and that allows for members to submit comments as well as review plans and reports. In analyzing the project in terms of CEQA, the city may consider whether existing environmental documents already provide an adequate analysis of potential environmental impacts. An earlier analysis maybe used pursuant to tiering where a program ER has been prepared and a certified or other CEQA provision if it can be determined that one or more effects have been adequately analyzed in an earlier EIR. So CEQA allows a lead agency to avoid repeating analysis that were already provided in a certified general plan EIR for a development project that is consistent with the general plan which this project is. So as part of CEQA streamlining section 218.3.3 in its parallel CEQA guideline, 15.183 provide for a streamlined environmental review for projects consistent with the general plan for which an EIR was certified. Pursuant to section 218.3, if the development project is consistent with the general plan for which an environmental impact report was certified, the application of CEQA shall be limited to the effects on the environment which are peculiar to the parcel or to the project and which were not addressed as significant effects in the prior EIR or which substantial new information shows will be more significant than described in the prior EIR. An effect of a project upon the environment shall not be considered peculiar if uniformly applied development policies or standards will substantially mitigate that environmental effect. So the purpose of the environmental checklist that was prepared is to evaluate the impact categories covered in the city's certified general plan EIR to determine whether the project's impacts have been adequately analyzed in that EIR or whether any new significant impacts peculiar to the project or project site would result. So based on the CEQA review, it's been determined that the city's general plan for 2030 EIR has adequately addressed issues and no further environmental review is required. So therefore, staff is recommending that the Planning Commission acknowledge the environmental determination and recommend approval of the coastal permit, design permit, special use permit, density bonus request to exceed height, encroachment permit for street and intersection improvements, and tentative map for the proposed project based on the findings and the conditions approval included in the staff report. And I'm available for any questions. Thank you, Ryan. And I believe the applicant's here to present to the commission. Welcome. I believe you'd asked for 10 minutes, is that right? Yes. Okay, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to first thank the staff and thank the commission for giving us the opportunity to be here tonight. I'd like to start out by, I'd like to start out by trying to figure out how to work this presentation here. There you go. Could you identify yourself, please, for all of us? Okay, thank you. I'm Tyson Sales with Ensemble Investments. And we are the representatives for the project applicant. Ensemble's been a part of the Santa Cruz community since 2006 when we purchased the Dream Inn and we've renovated and restored it twice now. We brought back the name, the Dream Inn, and we're long-term owners. We're committed to Santa Cruz. The Dream Inn is a crown jewel for our company and a big part of our identity. And we're very proud of the jobs we've created and the job we've done curating the Dream Inn and being a part of this community. I'd like to thank staff for their thorough job in the staff report and the presentation. And we're here just to provide a brief recap of the project and address some of the most salient points specifically the outreach process, housing affordability, and traffic. So, staff's already talked about existing conditions quite a bit. This site has been a paved parking lot since before the 1980s. There was the Daughters of Charity Hospital that was torn down and it's been a parking lot, just solely a parking lot since the 1980s. And the city identified the site as a prime opportunity for high-density housing since at least 1998 when the city adopted the Beach South Laurel Plan and the General Plan of the LCPs. This is not really a new idea. The site is located across the street from the Dream Inn and as staff pointed out, is similar in height and scale to the townhouses across Bay Street and significantly lower than the Dream Inn. Instead of a parking lot, this is the vision of what the project's gonna look like when it's complete. It's not a single monolithic one big block. It's a collection of four-story buildings plus some lower buildings to provide articulation that open around to clown floor plaza. And as the staff report laid out, the project was designed to comply and be consistent with the city's General Plan, the Beach of South Laurel's Area Plan and zoning. And the project does qualify for an increase in height under the State Density Bonus Law at this level of affordability. It could actually have asked for additional waivers or concessions and we chose not to and we're not asking for any changes to the zoning ordinance or any discretionary variances. The project is also consistent with the local coastal plan and was designed to fulfill the goals of the local coastal plan, including not impacting view sheds, no impact on habitat and specifically enhancing public access. Our efforts began several years ago and has evolved considerably over time with dozens of studies and reports done in response, both the planning process as well as community outreach. The process started in 2015 and 2016 with a visioning process and a lot of conversations with local stakeholders and retailers, a lot of the thought started around the plaza and what should it be and how successful would it be and how appropriate would it be. So we went out and talked to the best in Clowis local merchants and retailers and we took a lot of inspiration from Swift Street and talked to all retailers up and down Pacific Avenue and affordable housing groups and groups like Bike Santa Cruz to try to really understand the site better and what the location could be. And through that process, we also started meeting with the neighbors and we did a first large open format meeting which is in addition to the community meeting staff referred to in 2017. And that led to a complete project overhaul. And in 2017 through 2019, the outreach continued and that's when we started the technical study process with staff. So this has been a four year process to this point. So as I mentioned, the outreach started with a visioning exercise and meeting with various stakeholders, retailers, makers, bike groups and that led to a series of community meetings. And the first community meeting, we got a lot of negative feedback on modern architectural design. We were working with another architect that was proposing a more modern design and in response to the feedback from that meeting, we chose to do a number of things. One, we undergrounded the parking to increase the open space and break down the massing of the building. Two, we opened up the plaza and create a lot more public open space. Three, we changed architects and we got more positive feedback on Irving Gill design and the coastal Mediterranean and we went in that direction. Since then we've had over 70 meetings, both formal and informal and that's led to the two formal community meetings in December and July of this year to get input, listen, answer questions, provide answers and it's also really shaped and guided the technical studies. We went out and did two additional geotechnical studies because there was a lot of concerns brought up and we care very much about the integrity of the cliffs and the dream in and the last thing we'd wanna do is do something that would put that at risk. And we've set up multiple meetings with neighbors over this period of time. And I wanted to point out just as a consequence of those meetings, we've specifically chosen to increase the setbacks. We're expanding the size of Clearview Court's existing easement onto the parking lot property to move the fence line to be able to construct a sound wall and additional landscape buffer. So we're actually increasing the open space on the other side of the fence from the property as well as the setbacks on the project side of the fence. We're arranging and committing to pay for inspection and monitoring and any repair of any foundations accidentally damages during construction as well as foundation bolting for any foundations that happen to not be bolted today. We're gonna engage third party monitors to address any other impacts during construction. We've signed letters of intent cruzio and contacted the satellite providers to arrange for no interruption in antenna coverage as well as to also bring high speed fiber to an area to benefit other residents as well. We agreed to remove a lighting feature at the market hall and we're also committing to noise standards under the CCNRs that will exceed the city standard because there's been a lot of concerns about amplified music. And we also conducted a whole series of additional studies some of which were not asked for or required in the CEQA checklist including supplemental air quality analysis, supplemental shadow studies and responded to specific questions from the neighbors to help a leg concerns where we could and we've not been able to obviously allay a lot of concerns. We've allayed what we can and we've developed a frequently asked questions document that's been on the website and updated to try to communicate as effectively as possible through the process. Slide here. So first and foremost, this project is a housing project and the project was really designed around three key principles. The first is housing specifically, onsite mixed use or mixed income housing. The second is connectivity and public open space with streetscape improvements and the third principle of sustainability. I wanted to just highlight the affordability here for a minute because the city has its greatest need under the regional housing needs analysis for very low income and Santa Cruz has only added 12 very low income units over the last four years where by the Rena numbers which are granted based upon 1% growth which is a lower population growth than Santa Cruz has been experiencing, it's expected to need 180 units. So these eight units equate to 75% of the city's entire production over the last four years. I wanted to also just highlight the level of affordability for a two bedroom, three person household at 50% of area median income in 2019. That is about $49,000 a year which is $1,000, a little over $1,000 a month, almost 1,100 a month of monthly payment. This was governed by Mejaro. This would be to be negotiated if the project's approved. One of the conditions of approval would be a development agreement with a affordable housing development agreement with the city's housing department and the incomes and the payments correspond. So the total payment, including homeowners association, insurance and utilities would be capped at 30% of the resident's income. So these are estimates because we've been asked by the public for estimates and this is based upon the day's mortgage rates and our preliminary analysis today of what the HOA do's might be that the state DRE has not approved the HOA budget yet. So these numbers are very speculative at this point but that would equate to a purchase price of about $140,000 for a one bedroom. So highly affordable. For a two bedroom, that equates to about $208,000 purchase price, assuming a 20% down payment and a $1381 a month total housing payment. And for a three bedroom unit, those numbers are $226,000 and $1,500 a month. And I just bring this up to just illustrate the level of affordability or the deepness of subsidy of these units. In comparison to the city's standard, a one bedroom at today's interest rates might be $380,000 a year based upon $1,969 a month. Two bedroom unit for 30. And I wanted to also just bring up the streetscape and traffic improvements. So you'd asked for 10 minutes, is this? Can I have two more minutes please? You actually usually get more but I'd asked you how much time you needed. So I'm gonna ask everybody to keep to their time. So I'd like to do the same for you. I realize that's pretty short but. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yep. So we're not gonna go to public comment right now but because we're having some interruptions I wanna just plead with you all. Everywhere you look today there is discourse that is bitter and it's ugly and it's rude. Everywhere. And we get to be different tonight depending on how we show up. Clearly everyone here cares.  Thank you for that. We do wanna hear what you have to say. I'm asking you as chair, it's a hard job. I'm just pleading with you to be silent while other people are speaking. And I'm asking you to do that and I hope they'll do that for you so that we can all hear. All of us wanna hear what you have to say. As someone is speaking during public comment if you're cheering them there are a bunch of people that are cheered after cheered after cheered and then the next person up has a dissenting vote. They're not gonna feel very welcome. I wouldn't invite you to be silent whether it's cheering or jeering or clapping or snapping or anything so that we can hear those dissenting votes so that people do feel welcome coming up and sharing their views. Hopefully you wanna hear those dissenting views as well. It's a plea to please be quiet while other people are presenting. It's a request, I'm asking you. We're gonna ask, the commissioners are gonna ask staff and they may ask the applicant for some clarifying questions and then we'll go to public comment and then come back to the commission. Any questions of staff or the applicant right now? Mr. Schifrin. Would it be possible to bring back the slide with the beach and south of Laurel standards? Because I was confused by the fact that the setbacks for all the floors in answer to the question that I raised are meeting the city's requirement to being more than 15 feet or 25 feet or whatever it is. However, I remember there was a standard that said that the third story will be setback, number C, any third story element of residential or support development shall be stepped back from the two story element by at least 15 feet from the property lines at the streets. I'm a little confused about that. The implication is that the third and fourth stories would be setback further than the second story but are you interpreting that so that isn't really the case? Yeah, we actually had some in-depth discussions about this because it's not really written very well. It's not exactly clear. If you take away that last portion, then I think you're right, it could say 15 feet, but when you add that from the property lines at the streets, we discussed that with the planning director and kind of went through different iterations to try and determine how we should interpret that. And ultimately, through our discussions, we determined that the 15 feet is from the property lines at the streets. And so this project does meet that requirement in terms of the... Except as I understand it, at the sides of the proposed development adjacent to the residences, that's not a street. The street is Bay and West Cliff. That's essentially a driveway. So your interpretation is that that standard would apply to the driveways as well. I see what my problem is with the interpretation of that because it does give the impression that the higher stories will be set back more than the lower stories. And that on those two sides, they're not really adjacent to the streets. They're adjacent to the residences. So it would seem that would be the whole point of that policy would be to set the development back from the adjacent residences. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think there are different ways that it could be interpreted. I think the way we looked at it was, when it says from the property lines at the streets, that that requirement was specific to the portions of the structure along the streets. And you're defining the driveway as streets. No, I was referring just to West Cliff and Bay Street. So wouldn't then the parts of the project that are adjacent to the driveway need to be set back 15 feet at the third and fourth story? Which, as I understand it, they're not. Along the driveway? Yeah. Well, that's what I was just saying is that I think that the way we interpret it is when it says from the property lines of the streets, we're saying that the third story element setback is specific to the areas along the streets only. Not anywhere else. The way we talk about it. That's an interesting interpretation. Okay. No, I agree with you. We went round and round. I think you could interpret it different ways. Ultimately, we had to land on an interpretation and that's where we landed. My next question has to do with page four of the staff report, which is the technical report. And there was a geotechnical investigation said that there was an anticipation that the groundwater was perched rather than part of the groundwater basin. And I asked what was the evidence for that and when I went back to the geotechnical report, it just sort of said it was a conclusory statement that really didn't say where the evidence came from. And I think that needs to be, yeah, 5.3 says. 5.3 groundwater. Based on our observation during drilling, we anticipate this groundwater is perched. That's not necessarily convincing that it is perched. I would expect a more definitive statement about that. In fact, based on the analysis, it's not part of a groundwater basin. Makes it sound like it's not quite certain that that's the case. So I do have that concern. My first thought is out to the applicant if maybe their geotechnical person is here. Maybe they might be able to expand on that, but if not, then we might have to look into that further. Mr. Schiffer, do you wanna ask the consultant to come up? Sure. Okay, well. I think one other thing just to add is this is a registered professional geotechnical engineers, expert opinion based on the borings they performed. So that's the evidence. Right. And that evidence is that it was anticipated rather than assured that it was perched. Okay, let me move on. As you know, I had a question about the congestion due to the proposed stop sign at California and Bay that was looked at as part of the traffic study. And maybe Mr. Schneider is here to respond to my concern because the response was that the total congestion at the two California intersections with Bay would be about the same. But my sense was that as a result of moving the stops sign on Bay from California coming from the West side to California by the railroad tracks as part of the second and seven project, it would increase congestion on California Street. Now, the overall congestion on Bay Street might not be changed, but that could be a potential impact of the project that should be looked at is how significant would be the increase of congestion on California. I'm not saying there's evidence that it would be a significant impact, but it seems to me it will change because it will take much longer for during high traffic periods for cars to make a left turn or even a right turn off that segment of California Street. Am I being clear? Not very clear. I'm sorry. California Avenue or California Street? Mr. Schneider, could you introduce yourself so everyone knows who we're hearing from? Schneider, Assistant Director of Public Work, City Engineer, and just as a correct Eric's introduction of me, I'm not a traffic engineer. That's not a registration I currently hold. I'm a registered civil engineer. Okay. I'll still trust you to answer my question. Is California Street where there is currently a stop sign on Bay and California? No, that's California Avenue, which is closer to the ocean side. So let's say on California Avenue, as a result of taking away, if that's my understanding about what's gonna happen with the implementation of the segment seven rail trail, taking away the stop sign on Bay and moving it to California Street, that the congestion on California Avenue might increase significantly because it's gonna be much harder for cars to turn off California Avenue. And I don't know whether that would be considered a significant impact, but it seems to me it should be analyzed in the traffic study. And as far as I could tell, hadn't been analyzed in the traffic study. When we originally put in the stop locations and decided which to choose California Street or California Avenue to have the three-way stop, the side street volumes on California were very similar. And we chose that at the time, the location that we put them in, removing it to California Street by the railroad track to improve access for the rail trail project. We're also providing for a free right turn, which is going to improve the operation of that intersection. Yes, California Avenue entering Bay is gonna be more congested than it currently is. My concern with the environmental analysis and the initial study is that it has many conclusions, but it really isn't providing the evidence that's needed to justify those conclusions. So the question in my mind is, will the change in the placement of the stop sign increase the congestion significantly due to the project? And I just think that needs to be looked at. I'm not saying that it will, I'm just saying that it needs to be looked at in order to provide the evidence that the project is not having a significant impact on traffic. Well, based on cumulative traffic and the general plan analysis, the intersections, both of them, are a traffic impact the intersection and improvements are mitigation for the general plan. And currently what we have is the potential for signalization, which would be complicated with the offset intersection, but also providing free right turns. And that's part of the traffic impact program, which those would be implemented over time. Okay, well, I appreciate the information, but I don't think it really responds to my concern, which is a sequel concern and having to do with potential impacts of the project and what that will do to the congestion at that intersection. So that's... Well, with the general plan traffic volumes, which look at cumulative impacts of development in the city, there is that has been evaluated as part of the general plan, EIR, and provides for improvements to those intersections. Except that the general plan EIR, as I understand, it didn't anticipate taking away the three stop signs at California Avenue in Bay. That wasn't looked at in the general plan. The general plan EIR assumed the current situation in terms of those intersections. It's the segment seven of the rail trail, which was not anticipated or expected when the general plan was done, or the EIR, as far as I know, that is different from what was looked at in the general plan EIR. That's something wrong about that, and you can correct me, and I'm sure you will. Same, both intersections are being mitigated as part of the general plan anticipated traffic increases. Okay, well, I'm not gonna beat a dead horse there, but I would also, in terms of a traffic impacts, want to ask you about the truck hauling off for the excavation, and I understand that that's been considered, but it didn't seem like that. That certainly wasn't anticipated in the general plan EIR. There's, if I remember correctly, 65,000 cubic yards of fill that's gonna be taken away. I don't remember how many dump trucks that will be, but it would seem to me that needs to be looked at in terms of its impact on traffic. Again, I'm not saying that that will be a significant impact. I'm just, my point is that the environmental analysis needs to look at those impacts. I've never seen the environmental analysis address haul routes or excavation for projects. We, they're required to submit a truck haul route, number of trucks that are being used, and we in the Public Works Department regulate that by the routes that are chosen, the hours of operation. We look a lot at PM peak hour as our standard, so generally they don't operate during the PM peak standard or we don't allow it. I tend, I kinda remember that there are UCSC projects that look at construction impacts of trucks hauling away fill, but I hear what you're saying. I also raised a question about noise impacts on Clearview Court, and the response was that the sound wall is gonna be put up. This isn't really for you, so thanks a lot, Chris. But again, my concern is that there's no analysis as to what the effect, the noise impact is gonna be after the sound wall is there. It may well be that the noise impact is going to be minimized, but I think it needs to be analyzed and there needs to be a study that looks at what the noise is gonna be, what it would be before the sound wall, what's it gonna be after the sound wall, there's a feeling that it will meet the city's standards, but as I end up, from my reading of the initial study, that wasn't, there was no noise study to document that. Am I wrong? You're correct, but we, since you posed the question, Stephanie Strillo, our SQL consultant, did do some research on that, so if she's available, I might ask for her to come up. She, I think she spoke with her, her noise consultant part of it. Good evening, my name is Stephanie Strillo with Dudek and we prepared the environmental document, and we did talk to our noise specialists about this. In general, residential uses don't have the kind of permanent stationary noise sources that would cause a significant change in existing ambient noise levels, and in this case, the commercial uses are located towards the front of the property on West Cliff Drive. You also have the factor of the existing use as a parking lot and will now be, the parking will be underground, so basically the conclusion was that there would be no significant increase in sound levels and that the city's noise ordinance would enforce any kind of violations, loud parties, things like that. My, I thank you. My concern is that the access driveways to the project are along the residential, adjacent to the residential areas. So there's gonna be cars moving in and out both for the residential as well as for at least some of the commercial. So again, I'm glad that this has been looked at. I would like, I just think that before the project gets finally acted on that there'd be something in writing that really does document that. And let me follow up, because I think vibrations are also an issue that has been talked about and I appreciate the applicant saying that they're gonna, you know, take care of the houses if there is a problem. But again, I think CEQA requires that the potential impacts be looked at and I didn't see any vibration analysis that could be a result of the excavation. And it would seem to me that while it's very nice, I think it's desirable for the applicant to wanna solve any problems that exist or the residents of that area, they'd like to know if there are gonna be any problems that are gonna exist and some kind of a vibration analysis seems reasonable to include as part of the, to one, understand that there are gonna be problems or to understand that there are not gonna be problems. We could provide some more information, but I can say this based on Caltrans and other agency standards and thresholds, general construction equipment, other than pile driving would not result in substantial significant vibration that would cause any damage to structures or harm to people. And there's not gonna be any pile driving as a result of this project? Not to my knowledge. I'm happy to ask the consultant to respond to that.  But we can further answer that for you. Thank you. The geotechnical study does address temporary shoring. There are no permanent piles, but there are provisions in the geotechnical study for temporary shoring and it specifies the specific means and methods to avoid vibration. I think that's fine and may mean that there won't be a significant impact from the project construction. My point is that that is a potential impact peculiar to the property and it should be analyzed in the environmental document. So I'm not saying that there is a significant impact. I'm just concerned that the environmental document does not include an analysis of it. So thank you. My final question at this time has to do with the density bonus affordable units. I ask questions about whether they be for sale or not. And as the applicant said, the intention is to sell them. But my question is, can they be rented under the city ordinance? Is there any requirement that they be sold? Does the applicant have the option of renting them to a very low income family or household? I know for many condo projects in the past, there have been 10 years they could rent them. And I'm just wondering if that provision applies to this project as well. Jessica Miller, Management Analyst Economic Development. In the city ordinance for sale units, we only allow rental under special conditions and that would be subject to council approval. And it's usually for circumstances where the property owner would have to vacate to care for a family member for their own health generally. That's when we would see affordable units being rented. Well, my understanding was that the project at 555 Pacific, which was a condo project, had an affordability requirement. It's a condo project, but the applicants went to the council and got approval to rent those affordable units for 10 years, I think. And at that time, the council allowed them to be rented without any affordability restriction. Well, that was council discretion to choose to do that. They chose to work with the developer to do that. But under our ordinance, it's not strictly allowed. Like we, it's not. The developer could ask for that. They could ask that, but that would be at the council's discretion. Okay, thank you. The 555 Pacific project is a little different. It was an SOU project, so it's a small condo project. The SOU ordinance allows a maximum of 50% of the units to be rented at any one time. What the developer did after the project was approved was come back to the city and asked for a development agreement to allow all the units to be rented for a time certain. I think it was 15 years and in exchange, we got a higher level of affordability and some contributions to the affordable housing trust fund. So that was done with the development agreement. Staying corrected. I do have one other question that came up during, I think it was a staff presentation and that has to do with the fact that there's gonna be a development agreement for the affordable units. Did you say that or did the applicant say that? I said it. Commissioner Sifrin, are you, is this that question for staff or are you inviting the applicant? It can be for the applicant because I forgot who said it. I said it, I may not have used their correct term, but there is an agreement between the developer and the city that provides a deed restriction and perpetuity and allows for the terms and conditions of how the units are sold. We don't, the applicant doesn't necessarily decide who to sell the units to. There's a process through the city in Mejaro. I think that's called a participation agreement. A development agreement is something different on this state role. Under condition number 30, it refers to that. Yeah, that's under condition. Thank you, those are my questions. Vice Chair Spellman, I think you were next. Thank you. Yeah, I have a couple of questions for staff. The first is, this is kind of the first larger density bonus project we've seen. I'm wondering if you could clarify for us what the parameters are, what controls do we have? I know you said we have limited discretion at what we can ask for when a density bonus is requested. I wonder if you could highlight that for the benefit of everyone here tonight. And I know the applicant mentioned a point about they could have asked for more. How many waivers are you allowed if you could elaborate some on that? That'd be great. I'll be the first to admit I am not a density bonus expert whatsoever. In fact, this is my first time working on a density bonus related project. So I don't know that I can answer that question. But, actually, I don't mind it. But yeah, in terms of state density bonus law, there are certain limitations as to what our, as a city, what our purview is. So if, I think they originally were looking at doing encroachments into the setbacks as well as the height extra story. And we had determined that we didn't really think that the expanding out for the setbacks was justified, but certainly the extra story in order to gain the 23 units was. And so they removed those, removed those rock prop outback, the setbacks along Bay Street. And certainly we did a study and looked at the extra height and determined that it was justifiable just to be able to include those additional 23 units. It couldn't be included otherwise. Okay. Yeah, I'm additional. The statute states the applicant shall receive the following number of incentives or concessions, one incentive or concession for projects that include at least 10% of the total units for lower income households, at least 5% for very low income households, or at least 10% for persons and families of moderate income in a common interest development. So I think with 10 out of the 66 space units at very low or low, it comes within that parameter there. And the one incentive is the height variation that they're requesting. But I guess that's what I was looking for was more of the, what are the concessions that they could ask for, right? And it's clear that they meet the standard to ask for the density bonus and include those units in this project. I was looking more for where do we have wiggle room to potentially dictate how those units get executed? My next question is on, if we could go back to that RTB standard. I too had a hard time with that setback description. And I think I'm even more confused after your explanation to Commissioner Schifrin. So that statement C says, and it starts off by saying the third story shall be setback from the two story by 15 feet. Forget about the street and property line issue. Why would they say that if there isn't a setback from the third story and the second story? If your argument is it only relates to the property line and the street. I have a hard time reconciling that. Yeah, it's very, very poorly written at best. We struggle with it. It's difficult for us to interpret otherwise because of the reference to property lines at the street. I mean, it's easier to interpret the other way. That last six words, seven words make it difficult for us to interpret it any other way. Okay, appreciate that. The third question, it's not really a question, it's more of a clarification if you could pull up the site plan. You know, there's a lot going on in this project as far as movement of people and vehicles. I wonder if it's not prudent to either have yourself or applicant slash architect walk us through what the circulation is on this project from a person who lives in a unit that would enter off of West Cliff and or off of Bay as well as valet service circulation onto the site and then maybe talk some about pedestrian movement around this project as it relates to the hotel, the intersection. I'd like to understand that a little bit more clearly. Certainly, I'm trying to figure out if I can use a pointer here or? I can point to it. I guess we'll start out with the vehicular movement. The parking lot currently has two. Thank you. So, I guess we'll start out with the vehicular movement. The parking lot currently has two driveway entrances, one on West Cliff a little bit to the south of where it's proposed to be after the development. So, and then there's another entrance currently off of Bay Street. And there will be two automotive entrances proposed here. These automotive entrances will be gated, but there's an area for queuing of cars and the gates would be more, it's more of a traffic control system and those gates would be closed at night but open during business hours to drive into the public parking areas. So, someone could drive in off of West Cliff or off of Bay and this will be posted at I believe eight miles an hour. This is a driveway, not a public street. So, they would be able to drive into the building. The area with the parking spot shown here is covered by residential homes above. And there's a second set of gates to go down to P1 and to P2 and there's two separate ramps. So, the ramp where onto the south where Ryan's showing his pointer there, that goes down to P1 for the residents. So, the primary residential access would be off of Bay Street. The valets currently use the, primarily use the West Cliff driveway and the valets would be able to go directly down to P2 which is the valet level. And there's a secondary motor court here adjacent to that driveway. So, that if a resident or a visitor is using a ride share, those ride shares would not be waiting on the street and causing traffic disturbances on West Cliff or Bay or if they're just waiting for their friend to pick them up. So, we have a drop off area there. Just a secondary area for people to wait. So, if there are any cars idling, those cars would not be idling, uncovered adjacent to the neighbors. They'd be under the covered portion of the building. The residential lobby there as well as some hotel offices are adjacent to that drop off. And the Coastal Paseo, the plaza, is open on three sides. So, there's pedestrian access as well as viewpoints from the guest parking as well as from the motor court as well as views from Bay Street all the way through the plaza to the north so that the plaza is really open on three or four sides. And the fourth side is a wide Paseo kind of a gallery. We've envisioned it as an art wall and we've talked to some local cultural groups about possibly what we might display in that area. But the idea would be that that is an art walk that would display historical photos or perhaps items that are relevant to the history of the site in the area. So, does that answer your questions to the automotive before the bond industry? Yeah, so the level one ramp, the residential ramp, let's call it, that's the only way to get to the residential level. The other ramp doesn't take you down there. Correct, that's the only way to get, so that would be card key access for the signed resident only. And if someone's coming in for the visitor parking, they're in the visitor parking zone and they see a closed gate and they wouldn't be able to get in. But the residents are gonna drive in through primarily through Bay Avenue and down that ramp. And vice versa, the ramp to P2 is only valet, how hotel parking. Correct. Yeah, I think that clarifies what I was looking for, thank you. And if you could highlight the pedestrian movement? Yes, yes. So there's currently a crosswalk, where this crosswalk, or approximately where this crosswalk is shown, that connects the dream in to the parking lot and that's used not just by valets and hotel guests, but there's a fair amount of just neighborhood pedestrian traffic of people that are crossing the street there. And unfortunately, it's been a very challenging intersection because of sight lines, because there's power poles that are in the sidewalk that obstruct sight lines and you've got cars merging in a hill. And so we're proposing to improve that intersection, although that is already underway with public works. There's, I believe, a project to put a flasher in there. We're proposing additional improvements beyond what's already proposed. We're proposing to widen the pedestrian refuge and enlarge it, and some additional improvements to that crosswalk. Then there's crosswalks at the corner of A and West Cliff that will also remain. We are widening the sidewalk. We're proposing to widen the sidewalk on the, actually east side here, but the ocean side of West Cliff as well as to improve the bike lane. And to do that, we're taking a piece of the parking lot and shifting the right of way. So we're proposing a small land dedication at the corner for street purposes, but this would actually be an easement for sidewalk purposes. So the realignment of the right of way would happen within the current right of way, but we would be dedicating an easement for sidewalk purposes within the dream and parking lot site to actually widen the coastal side of West Cliff Avenue as well as to widen the bike lane by a foot or two. So the sidewalk goes from like six feet to eight feet or so, I think Chris or, anyway, the information's all in the diagrams and someone could clarify that, but it's a widening of a couple feet of the sidewalk in the bike lanes as well as undergrounding of utilities to improve pedestrian safety and sight lines and also to allow for hopefully pedestrians and segways to use the sidewalk as opposed to what we see a lot of times right now as pedestrians and people with baby strollers are hopping down into the bike lane to avoid the power poles. So there's a conflict right now in front of the hotel where pedestrians and bikes are both using the bike lanes. So by improving the sidewalks, hopefully that'll also improve the bike lane. One more question. Is there an accessible access to the Paseo other than off of Bay? Yes, there is. There's some stairs that are not accessible but there's a ramp in front of the stairs just immediately to the south of the stairs. I'm not sure if you can see it. On West Cliff Drive, if you move, yeah. There's a little bit of a switchback sort of ramp with some coastal-mounted landscaping. So the Paseo is accessible directly off of West Cliff as well as Bay. Thank you. Mr. Conway? Yeah, thank you. And you could stay up there. I have some more questions for you. First of all, thank you for your presentation and for explaining your project to us tonight. And for your, you've obviously gone to great lengths to accommodate needs in the community. I have a few more questions kind of in the order that they came up. So first of all, it partially answered. I was struck by, I think the bike parking, is it on the lower of the parking or is it the first level? I'm not sure you count underground parking. Yeah, so we've designed large storage spaces. Make sure to use the mic, please. Thank you. So we've designed large storage spaces in the upper level of the garage. We have a couple different bike rooms. We have a bike room for employees, for both the hotel employees who currently don't have a dedicated bike room. They use, there's bike racks in front of the hotel and sometimes they're able to use valet storage but there's no dedicated bike room currently at the hotel. There's gonna be hotel offices here as well as there's retail employees that may ride bikes to work. And on the main plaza level, we've designed employee lock rooms with showers and changing areas and employee bike rooms to encourage the use of bikes by employees both for the hotel as well as retail. And that is separate from the residential bike parking. We have a large amount of storage for the residences. This is envisioned for a family that lives in a two bedroom may have four or six bikes and not one or two and they may have surfboards. So these storage spaces are approximately five by eight by 10 at the smallest size so that people don't necessarily have to take all the bikes and surfboards upstairs, downstairs in the residential elevator but we have a large freight elevator that's accessible from the Paseo that goes directly to the storage for access to that bike area or board storage. Is there, do the units themselves have any accommodation for bicycles inside of them or expecting that it's gonna be in these various storage areas? Oh, I mean, I could use myself as an example. I'd say, my road bike, I would keep in my home but my beach cruiser, I'd keep downstairs in the storage unit. Sometimes we see some fancy parking hooky thingies. I'm just wondering about that. So then my last thing is just on the security but I'm a bike commuter too. So I'm concerned about that. It looks like there's, it's not gonna be public access to where bikes would be. If we can go back to the site plan, we have a number of bike racks that are in prominent locations in the plaza so that there would be direct line of sight so that if you're sitting in the cafe, you can have your bike in front of you. So there's really, there's bike storage for visitors, there's bike storage for employees, there's bike storage for residents and the needs of all three are different so the configurations are different. Okay, thank you for that. I have, while we're here, could you show, I have a couple questions about the affordable units and how you're treating them. So the first one is I'm wondering if you could show me, have you already identified where the affordable units are in the project or is, sometimes it's done at this stage and sometimes it's not until you get a little further along. I know that they've identified the types, one, two, three bedrooms, the number of each of those but I don't know, have you picked the actual units themselves in the location floors? No, I don't, I don't know. We did not specify it in the application. So the fact that you haven't done that, it's gonna answer one of my questions. I don't know the cities ordinance them as well as I know the counties but I think it does have standards that the affordable units, how comparable they are to the market rate units and it sounds like a lot of, sometimes developers don't try to cut any corners for the affordable units and sometimes they sort of pare it down to make it as minimal as they need to. We paid attention to those standards but the, the residences stack vertically. So, you know, we have like for example, one bedroom floor plans that range from the city's minimum size of about 650 square feet to closer to 900 or 1,000 square feet. So there are no units designed that are in the entire community that are below the city's minimum standards and the units that are sold for affordable will be identical in square footage and the basic amenities but not necessarily in say the flooring as the market rate units. So the project was designed with the city's policies in mind and we can work with staff to determine whether it's the first floor, the second floor, the third floor or which particular residence ultimately becomes designated as affordable but they all meet and exceed the city's minimum standards. Yeah, I mean, and I think what they typically do is you have to have the average number of bedrooms of each type has to be equivalent in the affordable. So there, you have to have the same portion of three bedroom affordable, a do-do market rate and so forth. And we did specify that in the application. Yeah, so are you planning on selling these units right away? Yes, provided that the economy supports sales, but yes. I know that that has happened but sometimes developers are going forward and they wanna build a rental project and they say they're building a rental project and they file a map and I just have to tell you it drives me crazy. I think it causes problems down the line for the community and so forth. And I know sometimes it happens because of financing that's available. So I'm really glad to hear that you're filing a map and you're intending to sell the units. So that's good. Then my next question is about traffic and I know Chris is here but actually the best picture I saw was one we caught a glimpse of in your presentation. Would you mind bringing up your, there was a picture you were showing about the roundabout? Let's see if I can speak to that. Okay, and maybe. I just have a mouse. Keyboard to exit the, I threw it, you know? All right, there we go. There we go. A little further. We didn't really get a chance to, so while you're looking for the picture, I have to say that traffic is obviously, it's a concern of the community. I know it's one that I'm really concerned about. Also it's a, there we go. That's the diagram that I don't think I'd seen anything that illustrated it. This is right where the presentation left off. These are the two different alternatives that were analyzed. And the general plan and the capital improvement plan currently specify a signal, I believe in 2021, 2022, but I'm not sure that the funds have been allocated and that's not fully designed. So there's been design work for these intersection alternatives that's been undertaken through this traffic analysis as well as simulations and depending upon whether it was a micro roundabout or a signal, there would be a small dedication at the corner to widen the intersection between a couple feet and eight feet or 10 feet or so, depending upon which of the two alternatives were chosen. One important point is this micro roundabout is possible only with a land dedication. So this project makes the possibility of a micro roundabout an option for city council to consider that would not otherwise necessarily be there without a land dedication. Okay. So I do get that roundabouts reduced greenhouse gas emissions. And we've had a number of presentations about that, but that one of the things that was stated was that the city feels that the roundabout is safer than a signalization. And I was wondering if you would mind explaining that a little further. I think that's not our system director of public works. The in general roundabouts are safer than traffic signals there are. There's no ability to have a perpendicular accident. Someone can't hit the side of another car, everybody's flowing in the same direction. So while there may be some accidents, there the severity is a lot lower. With the roundabout, traffic's anticipated to be slower, flow more smoothly. One serious concern I have with the traffic signal is that pedestrians who are waiting for the signal to turn green, particularly on the ocean side, are gonna stack in the bikeway because the sidewalk isn't really that wide there. So it's gonna be about eight feet, which is a good width, but it'd be better if the pedestrian activity can be more free flowing. And thank you for bringing up my actual personal concern. Could you also explain how, I think I can see on here, this is an intersection I bike through all the time. How do the bike lanes work in the roundabout alternative? It looks like the green, I think the green on there isn't actually the green lanes. Yeah, the bike lanes are dropped and the bicyclists merge with traffic. So it's kind of like it was, it is down at the... Right, at the depot side, it's what the depot intersection as well as the work intersection, aside from the two-way bikeway that's on the south side, on the ocean side. Okay, I guess that's my question that I have right now. I'm gonna go to Commissioner Greenberg next. Thank you, and also really appreciate the detail of the application. I had some questions that I don't feel like they've come up around some of the economic impacts in terms of employment, which is one of the goals of the plan for this area. And if there are any estimates on the number of jobs that are gonna be generated as a result of this development? There has not been a separate fiscal impact or job creation analysis for this amount of hotel ancillary space, retail space. Typical ratios might be a couple jobs per, maybe up to 10 jobs per 1,000 square feet for food use less for general retail. But that analysis has not been a part of the application. Okay, and sorry, along those lines. So I think one of the wonderful things about the Drain Man is that I believe it's the only unionized hotel in Santa Cruz in terms of the workers there. And I don't know if that would extend to the jobs that would be generated at the new development. This would be a separate development in terms of the Homeowners Association and the restaurant space would be leased, not necessarily a part of the hotel. The hotel is the only union jobs in the city. And I think that would be a separate facility. And the final question along these lines is, and I realize if you haven't done this analysis fully, but maybe you've thought through, I feel like at some of the earlier meetings, there was kind of an idea that potentially some of these units could be purchased by employees of the Drain Man, and in so doing could mitigate traffic as a result and could enable people to walk across the street to work. And if you have any estimates of the degree to which employees of the Drain Man would be able to afford the units in this development and the mitigation that might create in terms of traffic. That was part of the motivation for doing very low income units because those correspond to service worker jobs. And the Drain Man employees are significantly better compensated than your typical, I think believe Santa Cruz's current average wage for service workers is about $12 an hour and the hotel wages are significantly higher than that, but those employees are still within the very low income and low income category. Predominantly the largest number of them would still qualify for those very low income units. Now we can't show any preference, the process would be dictated by the city and the city standards, but it would be wonderful if long-term hotel employees who've been commuting for years or other folks that work in the war for the boardwalk area that our service workers that need affordable housing can buy some of those units. And that was certainly a part of our thinking when we decided to go do very low income units as opposed to a greater number of say, low income units or moderate income units to qualify for the state density bonus. That's my question, thank you. Mr. Schifrin, you had another question. I just wanted to follow up on the roundabout. I thought the roundabout was being recommended as the mitigation for traffic. Is that not the case? Is it still undetermined or? Either solution of traffic signal or roundabout will mitigate the traffic impact of the congestion. Use them, can you lean into the mic, little Chris? You know, either solution, traffic signal or roundabout will mitigate the intersection impacts. However, staff, public works staff recommends the roundabout, we prefer the roundabout for reduction in greenhouse gas, pedestrian activity, flow, traffic flow is gonna be slower, more better regulated, and also safer in general. But that's not a condition of the project. That's sort of a little confused about what would be approved. Oftentimes as the rest of the staff recommendation is pretty clear about what the staff is recommending, it seems like the recommendation about the traffic mitigation is not so clear. It would seem to me if it's part of the recommendation that would go to the city council if the commission was recommending approval of the project before the roundabout, is that part of the staff recommendation? That's our preference, yes, public works department. Yes, okay, so that the project at this point is would include the roundabout. And can I ask the applicant? It was a little, I had understood that the applicant had voluntarily agreed to pay for the design and construction of the roundabout. Is that the case? While the applicant's coming back up, Ryan, I wanted to give you a chance to clearly answer Commissioner Schifrin's first question about, is that part of the encroachment permit or? Correct, the encroachment improvement includes, excuse me, the improvements to the intersection. The roundabout is what's being recommended over the signalization. I think the thought was to hear from the community their preferences or hear from them. And then ultimately it's gonna be up to the council as to which is chosen. But the staffs, as Chris indicated, our preference is the roundabout, okay, thank you. And I wanted to clarify that as the applicant, we don't have a say or a stake in the decision as to whether the traffic improvement is a roundabout or a signal. So we analyzed both scenarios in the application and the traffic analysis analyzed both scenarios because it's not our decision, it's a city council decision. And I wanted to clarify with your earlier question about the cost of improvements. We are voluntarily paying for the sidewalk widening and the west cliff improvements and the bike lane improvements, the cost of the signalization, the cliff and bay, intersection improvements are already a part of the capital improvement program and we're making our traffic impact fee contribution, which Chris, I believe, was somewhere in the order of magnitude of what was there, somewhere around $400,000, which would go towards that and other traffic improvements, but that is not a city project or necessarily a developer project at this point. So if I'm understanding what you're saying, although it seemed different than what I read in the staff report, the development is not paying for the roundabout, either design or directly paying for the design or construction of the roundabout. My understanding of the staff report is that you had agreed to pay for those in addition to the traffic impact fees. At this point, I'm hearing that that's not the case. Now, I think you are correct. The improvements are part of the proposal of the application and anything worked out in terms of additional traffic impact fees will be worked out at the next stage, but the improvements are part of the proposal. Well, the applicant looks a little bemused there. Is that your understanding of it? This is a significant... Yeah, it's a significant point. That is not our understanding. Christian Eider, the traffic impact fee is estimated at $539,000 and the traffic impact fee ordinance allows for development contribution to the cumulative impact of the intersection and credit allowed for the work that they do. So it may be that such that part of the traffic impact fee that they're paying will also be paying for the intersection. My concern is that the recommendation is that it be installed and operating prior to occupancy. And I guess my question is, how much is that gonna cost? We don't have an estimate at this point. This is a conceptual plan that's before you. Between now and the building permit stage, there will be a final designs for all the offsite improvements. At that point, their engineer will have to calculate the cost of those things. But their commitment is only 500 and some 1,000. If it's a million dollar project, does the city have the money to complete the project? There is a fund balance in the traffic impact fee program. I don't anticipate a million dollars for a mini roundabout. Now, they are also required to pay that's not included as part of the traffic impact fee program, but all the other improvements they're talking about, which is the sidewalk revisions, this bike lane striping, undergrounding of utilities, and all those improvements as well. I get that. I would recommend that, assuming this goes on to the council, that the staff report really made clear that the applicant is not paying for the roundabout. It's not directly paying for the roundabout, which is the recommended improvement. If I certainly didn't understand that in reading the staff report, I thought the applicant had agreed to pay for both the design and the construction. Well, and it would potentially be a credit to the traffic impact fee. They have to pay. I understand that now, but it wasn't clear that that was the case from the staff report. Well, we're on this topic is the dedication part of that equation as well, credit? No. No. Okay. Dedication would be required of the project condition. But not an economic credit. No. Okay. Vice Chair Spellman, I think you have one more question for the applicant. So in the literature, I don't know if it was in the set of drawings or in response to community comment, but you talked about sustainable design standards and attaining a lead gold certification for this project. Did you elaborate on that? Is that something you're still committed to? And if so, could we add that as a condition of approval? Yes, it's something that we're committed to and you could add it as a condition of approval. Thank you. I have one question for you, Mr. Sales. So EIR, the EIR process is extremely expensive. So you sound like a silly question to ask. Why didn't you do that? But you've also gone to extensive cost and effort with all of the non-EIR processes and analyses you've done. Did you consider just doing the full EIR? I would say that the level of studies and the expense and the time has been equivalent and greater than some EIRs that we've done. When we started the process, there was a discussion as to whether an EIR was appropriate here or not and we consulted with city staff and the city's CEQA consultant and the determination was that the tiered EIR approach, which is what we took, was the most appropriate and we voluntarily did additional studies and we've had community input on the process. So while it's not an EIR, it's certainly not a shortcut of any means. And certainly, I think if we'd realized that the traffic analysis and the technical analysis was gonna take two years, we might have started out down a different path. Thank you. Commissioner Schifrin? And I follow up with that. Just to clarify and staff can correct me if I'm wrong, the decision on what the environmental document is not determined by the applicant, it's determined by the city. So if the city had decided to do an EIR, the applicant would have done an EIR. There may be consultation, but the city is responsible for the environmental document and deciding which environmental document needs to be prepared. Is that not correct? That's absolutely correct. Just a couple of other comments on the whole CEQA process. Really the purpose of CEQA is to disclose and mitigate impacts. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it's about. There's also these streamlining provisions that apply and I think there's somewhat of a misconception out there that we're saying that there's no impacts associated with this project. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that there's impacts, but those impacts are mitigated through either mitigations contained in the general plan EIR or from these uniformly applied development standards such as the heritage tree ordinance. That's really what we're saying at the end of the day. And then if you look at what we did, I mean, there's a very extensive analysis. It's not only the technical reports, but it analyzes how those impacts are mitigated through existing mitigation measures that are on record. This 21083 does not have any public comment periods. We actually posted the draft document. I think it was 70 days prior to the second community meeting. CEQA requires just for comparison on EIRs a 45 day review period. So this is almost twice that. We really went out of our way to provide as much disclosure as possible on this. So I guess that's what I need. But to answer your question, yeah, it is ultimately our decision. And we've applied, we've processed CEQA documents this way before. I think we've done seven or eight. So it's not uncommon. Mr. Conway. I just, it seems like a really important clarification and thank you for the points that you made about noticing and so forth. But I feel like this conversation could be misleading if there's a perception that either a project has an EIR and therefore has environmental review or if you don't, then it doesn't have environmental review. And I feel like it's kind of been set up that it's one or the other. And this project, I think what you're saying is it has gone through the level of environmental review that the city, which is the responsible agency, has determined is appropriate. So it's not like it didn't have it. And the difference between, you know, the choices the city made, I mean, the difference between doing an EIR or an initial study and all of the, you know, looking at all those studies are what? I was wondering if maybe either you or Ms. Striello might explain the difference in terms of what is really the difference between doing an initial study and which is the level of review that this project has gone through tearing off an existing EIR and doing a full one. Well, CEQA sets forth the process for environmental review when a project is analyzed. And the first step is to see if it's subject to CEQA. The second step to see if there are any exemptions that would apply. The third then is to look to see if there's any existing documents that have reviewed the impacts that are associated with the project. The next level is then to do an initial study to figure out whether or not a project would have a potentially significant impact that would trigger the preparation of an EIR. And then the EIR is the last step in the process when there's either a potentially significant impact that can't be avoided or any of the mandatory findings of significance are triggered. The section that Eric mentioned is just one of probably a half a dozen tools in CEQA that encourage streamlining by looking at whether or not another document has adequately addressed impacts. And in this case, we went through the process of a checklist that's very similar to an initial study and looked at every topic to see whether or not the general plan evaluated the impact, what the level of significance was, and whether or not the project impacts were within that scope of the impacts previously analyzed.  And at the end, the conclusion was either that yes, it was covered. The scope was covered within the general plan EIR or that with the provisions in the project, there would not be a significant impact or that with the application of these uniformly applied standards that are applied to any type of similarly residential project, there would not be a significant impact. So that was the basis for doing it that way. The city's general plan is still relatively new having been when EIR having been adopted and certified in 2012. And this is just one of several techniques that is now encouraged, especially for mixed use projects to streamline the environmental review. That's helpful, thank you. Can I restate the question? That's helpful. What percentage of the full EIR work and analysis was done in this case? What was that? A number of steps were taken. There was an environmental analysis, but not the EIR. I think it's in your staff and the report is the environmental checklist that went through every topic to discuss how was evaluated in the general plan and then specifically with the project site what the impact was and if that was within the scope that was covered in the general plan EIR. In totality, there's an EIR which is a cost and process and heavy lift and then there's what was done here. Can you compare the percentages? Percentages. How much of the work for a full EIR was actually done here? Can you assess that? Probably 90, 95%. Okay, that was the number I was looking for, thank you. So I'm gonna go to the open and public hearing unless commissioners have questions for staff or the applicant. I'm gonna hold additional questions and concerns till after the public hearing, but I wonder if we might take a break. Okay. We're gonna take a break for five minutes and then we're gonna open the public hearing and invite everyone to speak if you'd like to. We're starting with the two groups that asked for extra time. Can I have your attention, please? We're gonna get going again. Could everyone take their seats and please be silent? We're gonna get started. Could everyone please take their seats and remain silent? Please take your seats so we can get started again. Thank you everyone, we needed a break. So we're gonna open a public hearing and I'll repeat my plea to seize this opportunity to demonstrate how we are unique. Our special community, we get to show emotional maturity and listening skills and respect for one another. So please be silent while others are speaking so that everyone can hear. I hope they do that for you. So I'll repeat that plea and that's about all I can do really is ask you for that. So that's my plea for you. And we have had two groups that have asked for extra time. Everyone will get two minutes to speak and address the commission. We do wanna hear what you have to say. We thank you for coming here and we have to balance the intention, the interest in hearing what you have to say with process and getting the work charged to us tonight. So we'll limit it to two minutes and I ask you to, there's a timer, there's red, yellow, and there's green, yellow and red lights and then there'll be a beeper that goes off when your time is up. So I ask you to honor that and help me manage the meeting by simply finishing your sentence at the end of that time and then letting the next speaker go. We invite you to say your name. You don't have to do that but we welcome you to do that and invite you to do that. And two groups, everyone will get two minutes and we invite you to stand up, line up on the right hand side of the room, sign in before you come up to the lectern and speak. Everyone will have two minutes except for the two groups that have asked for extra time and I would invite the clear view court representatives to come up first. Welcome. I'm sorry to interrupt, how much time would you like? I think I could talk fast for 10 minutes. Okay, 10 minutes it is, thank you. And being recirculated is what I sent you in your packet as well as a supplement today because I know I'm gonna run out of time. And I'm gonna read to stay focused. I hope you had a chance to read those comments in your packet and we're able to visit the project site and have a firsthand look at clear view court's proximity to its north and western borders and how most homes windows are three feet from the shared fence line. You would have seen the 55 trees that help cleanse the air and dampen the noise from the congested traffic on this corner. They help moderate temperatures off the streets and black tops provide shelter and nesting sites for birds and other wildlife and absorb artificial light. If you came to our side of the fence, you would have also seen the sky and sun which help us grow our food gardens. It lights, warms and dries our homes and property particularly in the damp days of winter when we depend on the sun's help. And the trees even help by dropping their leaves so we receive full benefit of the sun rays. We even have some ocean peaks from various spots along the western border. These are all important environmental features that contribute to our basic quality of life and environmental health that will be jeopardized by this project as proposed. Clear view court is a community of 68 small homes mostly manufactured, they are not mobile. 85% are resident owned. Our vulnerable community is largely fixed low income seniors, disabled, limited mobility persons and young families all of which have worked hard in an expensive area to buy our small homes. We have struggled to maintain a simple quality of life here and health and the vast majority cannot afford to move in the face of this latest threat to it which is why we stand before you asking for impacts upon us to be included in evaluating this project which can only fairly be done through a full environmental impact report. We've outlined our concerns in a 13 point list given to the developer and copy to my submission last week covering round the clock noise amplified by building mass and design, air quality degradation in car emissions, trucks, commercial vehicles, significant shadow impacts with the loss of light and sun equating to increase in residential expenses for maintenance to keep mold moss and mildew at bay and increase use of lighting and heating and the loss of our food gardens year round. Also blockage of signals. This was the first I heard dish and possibly looking at our digital TV antennas that go over the air, not everyone can afford subscribing to such things. Vacation uses of the homes and other safety items we feel we're not adequately addressed in reports. Most of the items on our list have not been discussed with us for solutions. Some information was withheld such as the uppermost measurements used in the shadow study actual measurements and or denied discussion. Items mentioned by the developer rather vague in the agenda report which I will speak to concerns about health impacts have attempted to be thwarted by last minute post last week to the agenda under a traffic health risk assessment. It's filled with errors, omissions and program analysis default limits. You can compare the plan sets to the report and I'll stand out. I've mentioned some in my letter with links to resources for verification on a myriad of known health impacts from such use exposures. A sound wall other than and other sound dampening features and materials for building in roadway are a requirement of the general plan 2030. It's on page 94. These are not a give to clear view court residents but a responsibility of the developer and many are not addressed or incorporated into the project. Eight foot sound wall would be needed to have some type of benefit to our homes. It's identified as six feet in the plans and our home set 18 to 24 inches above the ground. So if you see over the wall, you can hear everything. That certainly doesn't eliminate the impacts of street canyons that amplify sounds from all uses, including from building design on the north side, especially it swings towards the park creating a arc and the upper stories all around hot days and nights like we're having now, the windows are open due to lack of air conditioning. So close, so a close direct hit for this major new source of noise and emissions disrupting sleep impacting air quality and health. The same general plan page 24 gets and air quality requirements also and our concerns about air quality impacts have been denied in spite of high intensity abuses, replacing 50 trees, massive building, blocking wind and space that currently help with dissipation of emissions by the time it reaches our windows. For our residents to have cruise IO internet, the building, for our residents who have cruise IO internet, the building would have blocked signals. So then putting a 10 on the building is a minimum mitigation. And one that happens to give the developer free and discounted internet for their building too. Ignored is potential blocking of the digital TV antennas that hasn't been looked at. Again, this project towers 45 feet above our average roof lines. There is a fifth level, it contains 26, 10 foot tall stair towers, you gotta look at that. They aren't counting it in the 47 foot measurements. The inspection of clear view court homes is good. For good anchoring will limit the developer's exposure to liability, so inappropriate due diligence in response to resident concern on this issue. But it doesn't forfeit liability for damage that may still be caused to our homes during and after construction. And we do have a very antiquated sewer system that has not been considered. The portion of the property for clear view court residents was stated to be an 18 inch wide strip along the western border. It's unclear where that measurement starts and ends and what if anything will sit atop it. But this was in response to a resident request for a little more space, so it is a nice gesture. Again, most homes are only three feet from the fence borders. And that's where the project's new two-way busy road will be placed. None of this has been provided for in writing to clear view court. Many items remain that require solution discussions. We should not be made to bear the burdens of impacts, including costs of those and EIR is required. A great concern is setting a precedence for West Cliff Drive commercialization, which will destroy the very ambiance that people come here for. And that experience starts really down at Depot Park. Focus needs to be on protecting this valuable and coveted multi-use pathway for visitors and future Santa Cruz generations to have an urban escape and improve its safety for its many uses. Remember, ancillary uses are not the same as amenities and they're being lumped together here. Ancillary are essential to the running of the hotel business, such as parking, maybe storage, maybe offices. Amenities are things that would be nice to have and already exist inside the hotel and in abundance on the Wharf and Beachfront with more in the pipeline coming in those areas and along the Pacific Avenue spine, as it's called in the Beach South Lower Plan. It's been repeatedly stated that the general plan EIR did not include this site nor identify impacts. Its use is dictated by Beach South of Laurel, which zones it for residential and hotel ancillary, not amenities. Enough controversy, faulty reports and concerns exist to illustrate an EIR as needed, saying it meets the general plan EIR for city-wide buildout, even though it exceeds the beach area buildout estimates, is a stretch that does not justify the intensity of the project here. State density bonuses do not entitles such concentration of uses either, nor are they needed with an abundance of visitor services already directly across the street. In closing, Clearview Court residents are deeply concerned, we will be left with a non-livable community from impacts that we will suffer from and have to pay for, particularly for those with compromiser-sensitive immune systems and the added insults of loss in home values. Please require EIR, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Please be quiet while in between public comments as well. Is there a representative of SAVE Santa Cruz? You'd ask for attendance as well. Yes. Welcome. I'm going to hand in these petitions, major. Yeah, we can wait to start the time. Just like to read this real quick. This is a petition list opposing the 190 West Cliff project and furthermore, attached is a printout of the petition and the signatures collected by SAVE Santa Cruz Westside in opposition to this project. The total number of signatures collected so far is 1066 and we're still taking signatures. Signatures were collected both online and in person over the past year in response to the following petition. Quote, we, the following are opposed to the proposed expansion and over development of the dream and parking lot, which has been submitted to the city of Santa Cruz Planning Department. And so I'm a member of the SAVE Santa Cruz Westside and tonight we're going to be talking about the traffic issues. My name's Stu Phillips, resident of the Westside. Here's Bruce. He's going to talk about the traffic issues. One more thing. I want to hand out these pictures, but we can pass out to the commissioners. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Commission. My name is Bruce and I'm a member of the SAVE Santa Cruz Westside. I'd like to talk to you this evening about traffic on Dream Inn Hill.  The Dream Inn Hotel is not alone on this hill. It shares the hill with three motels, a B and B and a condominium complex. There are five pedestrian crosswalks on the hill, two at the top, two in the middle, and one at the bottom. On the Dream Inn Hotel side of the hill, there are four driveways serving the hotel and a city parking lot driveway at the bottom of the hill. Also, there are two high-speed bike lanes in front of the Dream Inn Hotel. They run from the top of the hill to the bottom of the Dream Inn. Every vehicle that enters or leaves the Dream Inn Hotel must cross a crowded pedestrian sidewalk, then cross two high-speed bike lanes in order to get the queue up in the, that was a vehicle, every vehicle, just queue up in the downhill traffic lane. Currently, this is what pedestrians facing, crossing of the five cross. They have to step off the sidewalk curve directly into the back of the path of oncoming bikes using the two-way high-speed bike lanes before they reach the single traffic lane, continuing to the other side that there will be another bike lane installed by the developer of the project is installed, approved. It's obvious to any open-minded person that the Dream Inn Hill is totally maxed out, overburdened, and extremely dangerous to pedestrians. To add anything more to this overburdened Dream Inn Hill is absurd. Oh, this is where it gets interesting. There's only one traffic lane directly in front of the Dream Inn Hotel, and that goes down the hill and is 13 feet wide, okay? The single lane starts at natural bridges and ends at the clock tower in front of the, at the Pacific Academy, just one lane end to end. That's all we got. Every car, city bus, truck, fire engine, police car, ambulance, lifeguard, resident, and tourist depends on that single lane.  I should mention that over the years, this crosswalk has been the site of countless pedestrian injuries and people have died at this location. We are to believe the traffic, how are we doing? If we were to believe the traffic, we report commissioned and paid for it by the developer, everything is going to be just fine and the proposed development is built, when it's built, there's nothing to worry about. The report takes the position that it's okay to introduce several hundreds of pedestrian crossings per day and year-round to the five crosswalks on Dream Inn Hill. Why am I not surprised? The computer generated traffic reports, as they have been doing, has nothing to do with reality on Dream Hill, nothing. Just ask any local, get this. The developer plans to install flashing yellow lights at the crosswalk in front of their lobby. This is the one that will connect their lobby to their new building of the cross street. Kind of flashing light, the kind of lighting system that activates when a pedestrian pushes a button on either side of the street, okay? Can you see where this is going? On a busy weekend, this flashing yellow light will never stop. It's just gonna be people walking back and forth, kids, people in the wheelchairs, crowds, and they're all gonna be heading to the new building. There'll be tenants in the building, there'll be all that going on, plus they'll be heading to the building to enjoy it, and it's gonna be a mess. Let's see, can you see, okay, so most tourists visiting Santa Cruz end up on Dream Inn Hill. This area is a major tourist destination on the central coast. People come from around the world to see and experience the wharf, the boardwalk, Pacific Avenue, and the ocean views along West Coast Drive. The Dream Inn Hill area is an economic engine that powers the Santa Cruz economy. We don't wanna mess this up, do we? Most visitors will be tourists who will go home and tell their friends about the lousy time they had sitting in gridlock traffic with whining kids in the back seat, and they will not be coming back. I'd like to share with you my experience in regards to fires. For 24 years, I was the first responder to the San Francisco Water Department, General Foreman, energy operations teams. Our team had plenty of things to do every day, but our most important responsibility was supporting the San Francisco Fire Department. 24, 7, 365 days a year, and two alarm and greater fires. There was always at least one member of our team on duty at the Water Department field operation charge station next to the radio room, ready to roll in less than five minutes. All first responders drove special trucks with red lights and sirens and advanced radio equipment in touch with all the other first responders involved. Our job was to get there first and fast, cross the fire line, and with portable radios in hand, check with the fire chief, then stand by his side, and do whatever he ordered. In many cases, the call was for give me more water. We all noticed as the years went by that we were encountering more and more traffic, night and day, which was slowing our response down on time. This is all in San Francisco within city limits. It was apparent that the slower response time of all first responders was leading to fires that were more advanced and dangerous. In my career, I went to great many fires. I saw things that I can't forget to this day, and to this day, I still wonder if we could have reached the fires quicker, could some of the tragic outcomes been avoided? Our city response was caused, let's see a minute on this page here. Okay. Our increased response time was caused largely by the city of San Francisco push to build countless, high rise density buildings and increase the population in the city from roughly 500,000 people when I retired to the current population of around 1 million. Does this sound familiar to anyone in this room? To me, it sounds very much like what the city of Santa Cruz is doing. As a veteran first responder who's seen it all, I respectfully asking the members of the planning commission to think first about their families, friends and neighbors when they cast their vote. I've seen what the increased response time to first responders can do, and I can tell you, something sometime nightmares can never go away. I have a question for the city planning department. I'll pass on that. Our group, safe Santa Cruz, safe Santa Cruz west side recommends that you do not approve the dream in expansion project. There are far too many unintended consequences if this project is approved. Thank you very much for listening to me tonight. Yeah, since we have one more minute, I'd like to, I noticed that it wasn't really clarified on the traffic flow around this project. Like every hotel guest that ever comes to the hotel gets dropped off at the hotel and the valet parking is, goes down the hill around the roundabout at work, back up into the project. And then every car that ever goes to the hotel has to come out on Bay Street and make a left turn on Bay Street, sometimes backed up, like we were talking about the California Avenue and Street. So it's gonna be really hard for every single hotel guest to come out at that driveway and make a left back to the hotel to pick up the guests. All right, well, thank you. And one more thing, thank you commissioners for what you do and for your time. And it's much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. So the timer will be set for two minutes for every additional speaker. And I know some of you are experienced this and for some of you, it may be your first time. It is hard to fit something useful into two minutes and I've done it, but I know you can do that. So, and you might be nervous, but we really do wanna hear from you. So thank you for being here. And it also is a little ungratifying sometimes because we won't have a dialogue with you. We will just listen to you. So I don't want you to waste your time waiting for a response. We will attempt to address all the comments that and questions that we get from the public in our dialogue when we bring it back to the commission. So welcome to the next speaker. Good evening, chair and commissioners. My name is Mark Maceti Miller. I'm a professional engineer and a 36 year resident of the city of Santa Cruz currently living on the West side. Our city is in a housing crisis. Been in a housing crisis for a long time. It's gonna be in a crisis for a long time longer if we don't start building housing. This project will provide 89 units of housing. The mix will be one, two and three bedroom units. They range in size from 650 square feet to 2700 square feet. Not only that, 10 of these units are permanently deed restricted affordable units and eight of these 10 units are deed restricted permanently affordable to families earning 50% of the area median income. I know you know what that means. That is hard to accomplish. In fact, in the last four years, only 12 units in the city of Santa Cruz have been built that will serve families at 50% of AMI. Not only, so this project will provide a diverse set of unit sizes, a diverse set of socioeconomic classes. This is the kind of mixed use diversity, housing development we want and we need in this community. Not only that, we get a substantial public infrastructure improvement that benefits everyone. We get an improved intersection that are sidewalks that are bike lanes. This will improve the safety of the people using that intersection, cyclists, pedestrians, active transportation users. This is a way of getting people out of their cars, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. I urge you to approve this project. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. My name is Russell Weiss. The city must require this project to go through a full site-specific EIR. And the 2030 general plan EIR doesn't address this project in any detail and the project environmental checklist is inadequate and inaccurate. I'll focus on traffic-related problems with the checklist. Section 17 incorrectly states that the project will not conflict with the transit program or policy. This ignores weekend summer holiday and special event traffic. When beach area traffic is heavy, cars now back up from the Deep Hope Park and wharf roundabouts up the hill to Bay and West Cliff, creating near gridlock. The measurements and level of service in the checklist don't include any of this. The impact of additional pedestrians crossing Bay Street and West Cliff due to the development is ignored. More crossings from residents, commercial and parking users will increase the gridlock. The current level of service deed that in reality is EIR below during heavy traffic is unacceptable. Minor traffic mitigations proposed for the project will be drowned out by increased traffic and crossings. Section 17 incorrectly states that the project will not impact emergency access. Fire, police and paramedic vehicles currently pass through the Bay and West Cliff intersection multiple times every day to patrol and handle emergencies along West Cliff, the beaches and the near lower West side because it is the shortest, fastest route. With increased traffic from the development, these vehicles will be rerouted more often and have to travel twice as far losing valuable minutes in an emergency. Increased traffic and pedestrian crossings will also impact the feeder streets, slowing emergency vehicle access to the main beach, the wharf and beach hill. Section 21 incorrectly states that the project... Thank you for your comment. Thank you. My name is Janine Lovett, I live in West Cliff and I prefer the small roundabout choice. I'm mostly concerned about the roundabout in front of the pier. I see that it is already currently a problem and I've seen three cyclists crash there without any thought of another car just because of the way the design of the traffic furniture. And I've been a cyclist for way too long, like 40 years and I find that also that runabout pretty frightening at times. So I think we need to redesign that roundabout, we need to include that into the cost of the city. It is just not, right now it's currently a problem and it's gonna get much worse. I'm also concerned about the trucks and the elementary school on Bay Street because I see that there's already a lot of traffic there and I worry about the kids there. And I think we need more planning with the traffic before we can approve this. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. It's my first time. My name's Gretchen. I thank you for your time and for everyone's time here who's spoken and stayed so late. This process is important and it's hard to be the minority. I'm in support of this project. It takes a lot to come up here in front of community members that I love and respect that I surf with and have for 35 years and share an unpopular opinion. But I'm here because I think it's important. I've lived here for 33 years. I studied planning during the Vision Santa Cruz when after the 89 earthquake I've seen a lot of development in this town and I'm not a knee jerk pro-development person. I think it's really important that good design is not only beautiful but it's forward thinking, responsive and embraces change and development. Change is hard. Density is hard. Density is also green. I'm a lead green associate. I really believe in green building and I like those elements of this project. I invite those of you that are knee jerk anti-development to take a moment and think of a couple different definitions of development that I found in Webster's. A state of growth or advancement. A new and refined product or idea. We live in a small town that is growing into a small city and we need to respond. I think that's what everybody's saying here and our safety and safety of our pedestrians and our bicyclists are number one in this project and I trust you guys to really look at those studies and really find out how we can fit more bikes and more pedestrians safely whether it be a roundabout or a light. I'd love to see a full pedestrian crosswalk light honestly. Oh, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. Good evening, my name is Doug Kiner. I'm here representing the, sorry, the City Bluff Homeowners Association. We're a common interest development. A few parcels west of the proposed development on Bay Street. Unfortunately, none of the parcels on this area of Bay Street north, excuse me, west of the development are part of the permit parking zone that exists across the street in the Lighthouse neighborhood. So we believe that the combination of elimination of on-street parking spaces if the roundabout method is the method that's approved or recommended will further pressure vehicles and visitors to this new complex to park further up Bay Street where there is no restriction on parking. We believe that the overflow onto Cliff and Bay Street will exacerbate the current problem which is not enough parking for guests and residents. And as I said, our residents at our complex as well as three or four others there on that side of the Bay Street are not eligible. Obviously the street itself is not posted for permit parking. We would strongly recommend that if the Planning Commission does decide to recommend approval in any form or fashion in addition to the obvious other traffic and impacts that were brought up here tonight far more eloquently than I can bring them up that the direction or the recommendation include city staff initiating and facilitating the process and amending ordinances as required to expand the permit parking area to include both sides of Bay Street on from Cliff Drive through Laguna Street so that permit parking passes would be available to residents and guests. And then obviously that traffic impact fees if appropriate and in addition to other authorized forms would be used to mitigate any cost to the city to post this area or implement such a program. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. Good evening Fred Geiger, Santa Cruz. This project as currently proposed is completely incompatible with the neighborhood. The height, if you will graph it out when you get home you'll see is completely off the chart. The general plans requires you had all these economic goals that are in the general plan that also requires things to be compatible. That's what zoning's all about with the neighborhood. The commercial use is also highly incompatible. You can have diesel trucks coming in right next to these people's houses.  It's gonna happen. I've lived in San Francisco. The clattering of the unloading of goods, lift gates, the beep, beep, beep, the trash trucks, slamming dumpsters. How would you like that in your backyard or 15 feet from your house? This is called incompatible. Another issue I think maybe needs to be investigated, visualize a giant concrete cube, inflexible, two stories, 25 feet by a hundred feet by a couple of hundred feet. Take this huge monstrous concrete block, bury it in the ground across the street from a 30 foot cliff, next to some three story buildings and shake it at about a seven and a half magnitude. What could go wrong? You need to find out. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. Thank you. My name's Marcy Road. I'm actually a homeowner two blocks away from the proposed development. I have big concerns also about the accommodation for parking. It sounds like there's 52 public spaces that are not associated with the hotel or with the residences. It was stated that you could expect up to 10 employees per thousand square feet of retail space. It looks like there's close to 18,000 feet of retail space plus all the employees who would work on a normal day at the hotel across the street. I'm hopeful as is everyone else that they will ride bikes. That's still a huge number of people that would need somewhere to put their transportation. I don't believe all of them will take public transport or ride their bikes. And then we need to include the people. I think there's two eating establishments proposed as well as retail space and other amenities that may not just be used by hotel guests. So that's an additional amount of parking. And it doesn't sound as if this parking will be restricted or I haven't heard any details about that to prevent other people who may not even be using the amenities there from parking there. And again, as someone said earlier, this is going to overflow into all the adjacent neighborhoods. Some do have a permit restricted parking but it's only from Memorial Day to Labor Day, I believe. And some streets very close to this development do not have any restricted parking. It was, I believe, a block by block decision that was made by residents. And again, we've talked a lot about the traffic circle and the traffic flow on West Cliff and Bay but this traffic's gonna expand into all these side streets. We had a similar problem in Moscados where Waze was telling everybody to take Santa Cruz and they actually just turned that into a one-way street to respond to the Waze diverting Highway 17 problem. The same thing's gonna happen in the neighborhood on a lesser scale. Thanks. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. Hi, my name's Andrew Palin. I've lived here my whole life in the county in North Boulder Creek. I hoped one day be able to live to afford to live in Santa Cruz, the city. I'm feeling conflict about this project. My favorite part is the housing and my least favorite is sort of everything else about it. I, in my ideal world, we would have, I know this is going to cause some people to both love me and also hate me at the same time, would be to have replaced this project with mixed use with a five-story apartment building with just like basically apartments the same size as the homes that are behind it. And but as long as we're talking like that's a fantasy. So that's not what we're dealing with. And with the current project, I mean, we need housing and the problem is if we're not gonna have it here, then where else are we gonna build it? Because it seems like each time I understand their concerns here, especially the people living in the small mini homes out behind. And I understand those concerns, but if we don't build housing here, the thing is where else are we gonna build it? Because it seems like every time I've been to Plank Beach, meaning Santa Cruz, I've been to them in Scotts Valley and even one in San Jose. And it seems like whenever we try to build somewhere, we build higher density or even just like higher dense and we're to like make it so we can fit more people into a smaller space like maybe making this a little bit more fertile by adding a little bit more to the housing supply. Everybody who is in the neighborhood just comes out at once and says, no, we don't want it here. And that's really the problem. So no matter what there's always going to be all these people around it who say, no, we don't want it here, but we gotta have it somewhere. I'm young, I'm in graduate school to become a teacher. I have friends though who have worked in, I have friends who I've known who've worked in the tech industry and they earn a pretty high wage.  And I think that clearly something has to be done. So I'm conflicted, but I'm edging on a yes essentially or some kind. All right, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Adrienne Pearson. Here is some solid information that could actually make your task tonight quick and easy because the only option supported by facts and law is to vote against approval of the permit application. Why is that? Elevations provided in the permit application show five levels and a height of 56 feet higher than the fourth level already permitted. There's actually a misrepresentation in the application of the true project height. The explanation offered in the permit application allowing height modification quotes from the section 24.12.150 zoning ordinance, allowing couple of scenery lofts or other roof structures for the housing of elevators, stairways, tanks, ventilating fans, air conditioning, or similar equipment used solely to operate and maintain a building. Let's see how that compares to the applicant's plans, which can best be visualized by page 93 of the application. All shaded areas are private decks, 27 total. Each deck has a stairway to it. 27 decks, 27 stairways, each directly above the fourth level condo directly below. It appears the fourth level condos are actually two level penthouses with a fifth level exclusive private deck. The entire fifth level is covered. It's obvious the plan clearly sets out a fully functional fifth level outdoor living area far beyond the need for occasional access by service personnel that the code section references. 45% of the project's open space is on this