Welcome to today's Joint City Council Planning Commission's study session. Madame, say a quick, could you do a real call for first the Planning Commission and then Council, or whatever's easiest for you. Thank you. Let the record show that all members of the Planning Commission are present and let the record also show that all City Council members are present with the exception of Council Member Sawyer. Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. Yes, item 2.1, Downtown Station Area Specific Plan Update, Preferred Alternative Selection, David Gouin, Assistant City Manager, starting us off. Good afternoon, here we go. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedholm and members of the Council and Chair Sisko, members of the Planning Commission. Thank you for being here today. I wanted to kick this off just very quickly to remind the Board and the Commission and the Council where we've come from. So this past year and a half, a lot of the work has been done by the Commission and the Council to put a number of housing policies in place. Very aggressive housing policies to try to address a serious crisis that the Council has made a top tier priority. That includes fee reductions, includes expedited permitting processes, includes density bonus, a lot of focus around development in our downtown near transit, and that's been a year and a half's worth of work. We'd like to think of this plan as being the keystone of that effort, that a lot of the work that policies that you've put in place will be implemented and enhanced by this plan being put into place. So that's what this plan is. It's re-envisioning what our future is of our downtown, how those policies are going to be leveraged to try to achieve the type of housing that we've been looking for over the past couple years. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to our Senior Planner, Patrick Streeter, to do the presentation. And before you start there, Patrick, for both the Planning Commissioners and the Council, Patrick's going to stop. Apparently, we've just got a revised edition of the presentation right around slide 16 or so to ask any questions. So we'll break it up in half, but he'll pause, ask questions for both the Planning Commission and the City Council, do the rest of the presentation. And then he has, I think, five questions he'd like feedback from both of the bodies. Thank you. Well, thank you, Mayor Schwedholm, Chair Cisco, members of the Council, and members of the Planning Commission. As Mr. Guen introduced, this is an update on our Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. And we will be looking at the draft preferred plan alternative that is before you. And I'm sure all of the members of the Commission and the Council are familiar with the slide, but for the benefit of those who are in the audience who are watching, we do have a Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. It was adopted in 2007, anticipating the opening of the Downtown Smart Station. And it was a plan that created a vision of increasing the number of people living near transit and also working in our downtown. It was a 20-year plan period. As I mentioned, it was in 2007, so now we're more than halfway through that planning period. We've had some construction on the non-residential side. There was around half a million square footage of non-residential envisioned. We're a little less than half that, but the glaring graph on this slide is the one on the left which shows our housing development. We envisioned around 3,400 new housing units. In the time since that plan was adopted, we've had 100 actually constructed in the downtown. As this commission and the Council have mentioned, we're in the middle of a housing crisis. It's been exacerbated in recent years due to the fires, and clearly there's something lacking as far as this plan in addressing that, which is why in 2018 the Council in setting their priorities did have downtown housing and downtown development as top-tier priorities. In response, the Planning and Economic Development Department reached out to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, applied for and received a planning grant to undertake this update to the Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. So it's worth noting that with the exception of staff time going into this, all of the funding for this update is through a grant. And the downtown may not be exactly what people envision when they hear the word downtown as far as planning purposes. So it does include Courthouse Square as well as Railroad Square. But it also includes several areas that are established, residential, historic neighborhoods, and other commercials and industrial centers, roughly from College Avenue to the north, down to Highway 12 on the south, and Dutton Avenue on the west to Brookwood on the east. And where we are in this process, as I mentioned, we got started in earnest earlier this year with Phase 1, which was a deep dive into the issues and opportunities. So doing the background studies to determine what worked in the previous plan, what didn't work, and what does the economic climate look like now, what could the city support? And most importantly, what's the vision for our downtown? Is it the same as it was in 2007, or has it changed? So in addition to bringing on technical experts and performing outreach to key stakeholders, we also did do an unprecedented level of public outreach, which was part of the scoping before both of these bodies. Previously, we heard that we wanted this to be out of the box thinking, and we really brought outreach to get as many voices to the table as possible. And we did respond by launching a campaign, both with traditional meetings, but also neighborhood pop-ups, meeting up at events, a robust online component, and taking advantage of our print and radio media to really get the word out. So based on all of that feedback, we developed what are called project alternatives. That was phase two. Phase two was the alternatives exploration phase. So three alternatives were created based on the feedback that we'd received, and I'll talk a little bit more about the specifics of them, but it was three concepts for how this plan could look. And again, we went out to the community, we went out to the experts and got feedback on what components of those different concepts were supported, what would be feasible moving forward. Those have been distilled down into the draft preferred plan concept, which is before this body tonight, this afternoon. And so we're looking for, in response, would be whether or not we've gotten it right, whether this looks like the plan that we should move forward, because the next two phases will be the detail steps. That's when we really drill down on what, parcel by parcel, what makes sense, how these should look, but also the environmental review that's associated with it. Part of the goal for this plan is to preload any environmental review for future development. So we want to anticipate any environmental issues that could come up in the future by addressing them now as part of this process. And so the real purpose of this preferred plan concept that's before you tonight is the summary of the consensus from what we've heard. It clearly and broadly lays out the policy that we'd be pursuing moving forward and kind of sets up that framework for how we will fill in the details. So while we're not going down on a parcel by parcel detail level here, we do want to get some guidance on how these broad concepts work and make sure that these are the avenues that we want to pursue. And so I mentioned during phase one we did that background context analysis for the downtown plan. One thing that we did notice was that the original plan was very focused on the downtown smart station. It envisioned transit-oriented development and really focused along the spine of the rail. What we're doing with this plan is we're looking at walkable distance, which is about a quarter mile, is considered walkable or bikeable, up to a half mile. And so we've kind of drawn these two circles around our downtown smart station as well as the downtown transit mall. These are our two transit hubs. And then the downtown is roughly defined as an area that's walkable or bikeable to those two transit hubs. This is also reflected with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's priority development area definition for our downtown. And I did mention that previous view in 2007 had around 3,400 new residential units and half a million square feet of non-residential. We've found in doing this analysis that just based on the underutilized sites and our vacant sites in our downtown, so underutilized meaning property where the value of the land is higher than the value of what's built on top of it, there's capacity for more than 10,000 new units in our downtown. So as part of this concept that's before you, we are proposing 7,000 new units, which will be roughly double what was envisioned in 2007. But our analysis and our outreach says that that's a, it's not an outlandish projection on how much housing we can have. There's actually, there is the demand and there is the capacity for reaching that level of housing. Additionally, something that's changed today is that we have the federally designated Opportunity Zones, both in Roseland, which is directly adjacent to our downtown, and in the downtown core itself. So those can be leveraged to help finance some of these catalyst projects that we're looking for. We also, there's a memo included in this afternoon's packet that talks about the barriers that we've encountered to having the development realized from that original plan. One of them has just been the process that it takes in order to move a project forward. We do have the benefit of having several boards and commissions as well as the council. And they're all what's called, let's consider discretionary review, meaning the city does not have to say yes to something. And so it can be seven different opinions or in the case of some projects, 14 opinions that are deciding how a project moves forward. So in response, we've already taken some steps, as Mr. Guyon mentioned earlier, in streamlining development and enabling this to occur in the city. So we have streamlined our design review, so it still goes in front of our boards of experts, but as a concept item where we get guidance, and then the ultimate decision is left to the zoning administrator for infill residential projects or projects that meet the needs of the city. We've also been working on an expedited permit review process to cut down the entitlement and building permit phase to really streamline that process and take a lot of uncertainty out of development. There were also economic barriers to development and I'll also just add for this previous slide. We're not alone in trying to move, especially residential infill projects forward. So in response to much of the legislation that's coming out of Sacramento, I mentioned discretionary review previously about having a decision to make. A lot of projects now will be able to take advantage of ministerial review. If they meet certain qualifications from state law, they would just be able to move forward based on yes or no answers. So that's something that the planning commission and the council have been presented with from our department before, but it's also something to keep in mind that a lot of these barriers are also being addressed from other levels of government. The plan I mentioned was adopted in 2007. Obviously that was on the cusp of our great recession. So that did have an impact on development, but we are seeing development bounce back throughout California and the Bay Area, not so much up here. One of the reasons is that it's an unproven market. We've recently acquired transit and it's not gonna be until the end of this year that it actually connects to the ferry going into San Francisco. And we just haven't had any of those large, multi-family projects to compare development to. Also the cost of construction is very high right now and it's the same throughout the Bay Area, but the return on your investment as in rents are much lower here in Santa Rosa. And then there's also infrastructure costs. Those are roughly the same anywhere you build, but it's another thing that's added on to the cost of doing business here. So in order to address that, as I mentioned previously, we've streamlined the process to reduce the cost and the time involved in development. We're also looking for public private partnerships, the opportunity to leverage city property or publicly owned property to try to cut short that delta between the project cost and the project return. And the purpose of that would be to establish some of these catalyst projects that would then prove the market for future development, kind of get the ball rolling. And then also just reaching out for our economic development center, finding out who our employers are and who they could be and what it's going to take to draw those employment centers to our downtown. And also just the visioning that I mentioned earlier, what vision do we have for downtown? What kind of downtown do people wanna live and work in and how can we work towards that vision? I mentioned earlier the process is a barrier to development. There's also just regulatory barriers associated with the way the previous plan was written. It did have a broad vision for the downtown and it had many great ideas, unfortunately, in implementing them that many of them were in conflict with one another. So we had 13 different land use designations within our downtown area. We had I think six or seven sub areas as well as different street types. So it was very difficult when you were to look at a single parcel to identify even what could be built on that parcel. And many times after checking the several references that you needed to, you'd find that they'd be in conflict and so it would just raise additional questions. So something that we're trying to do with this plan is to really simplify how that looks. We're trying to go with a more graphic-based format so you can easily look at a map, point to a parcel and understand what the vision is for that parcel and what it'll take to get there. We wanna provide flexibility. The previous plan was written in 2007. Technologies change, demand changes. We want this project to be or this plan to be future proof. So as an anticipated change happens, we want it to be able to be flexible and adapt as development needs adapt. And we also heard that Santa Rosa has a difficulty in identifying a sense of place. What's the identity for downtown Santa Rosa? So through this process as well as the other initiatives, we are looking to try to establish that and really make it a household name of downtown Santa Rosa. So that will bring us into the preferred plan concept. As the mayor noted, we'll take a pause here for questions from the council and the commission. Chair Siskill, you wanna start with the planning commission? Right. Commissioner, is there any questions about what we've heard so far? Vice Chair Weeks. Thank you, Patrick. Is there a certain standard for the square, the ratio for the number of units versus the square footage for commercial, for bottom space commercial? So like a mixed use development, how much commercial versus how many units would be included? Yeah, or vice versa, how many residential units do you need to support that number of square feet of commercial? Yeah, so there's no industry standard for that, but the common practice in the past has been to require ground floor retail with residential above. We do have some zoning districts. Our community, our neighborhood center zoning district has a ratio of a certain square footage to number of units. So that does exist in our code. I'm not aware of a standard for that. Questions down here? I have two. With the federal opportunity money for Roseland in the downtown core, is that gonna be strictly for housing or is that for infrastructure? How is that gonna work? That's privately managed, but it's for housing and commercial activities. So for new business or expansion of business or new housing on site. So it works for both. I think typically we hear about it on the housing front. We haven't heard much talk about the commercial side, but it's definitely an asset. And as we start looking at increasing office space and potentially bringing an industry down to the downtown that could be used as a funding source. So there could be some application of that funds to the Roberts Road area. Correct. Okay. And then just for clarification, when I read the background material, the memo was talking about the difficulty with the basic construction costs versus what the market will bear in rental. Prices, that's not something we can solve with this plan. I mean, I realize we're working on the development costs part of it, but that we don't have any control over that construction cost ratio to what we can get for rents, is that correct? That's accurate. Although, as I mentioned previously, when we are looking for these public-private partnerships, that's where we can do our part to reduce those construction costs. That way, even if the rents aren't, the luxury rents that I would pay for new construction, the lower rents would be offset by the lower cost of construction. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I think we're good. Okay, thank you. Got a comment. I appreciate your comment on future-proof plan. That's, I think, a nice aspirational goal for any of the things that we do at the city. So, if you have any questions, looks like we're good. Thanks. All right, let's get rolling again. The preferred plan concept that I mentioned, this is the result of the unprecedented level of outreach that I mentioned previously. We've had a number of workshops, and we've had over 800 Santa Rosa community members participate in these workshops. The most recent one, which was the analysis of the alternatives, we had 120 people show up for that. We've had a robust response to our online outreach. That's included surveys, but also activities, mapping activities, or preference selection. And we did get feedback on those three different alternatives, and we've distilled that feedback into the preferred plan concept that's before you. As far as the outreach has gone, leading up to the preferred plan concept, and then in the time since we released that at the beginning of November for public review, we've reached out to as wide a demographic as possible, including activities with youth groups.  One of my favorite pictures on the slide right here is we had a meeting with the Maxwell Court neighborhood. We went out to them. We met in one of their garages, and just the rest of the neighborhood came out, and we had some snacks and a pretty energetic discussion about the future for Maxwell Court, which I hope you'll see reflected in the maps that are before you. And it's worth noting now I'll be going through some of the maps that are in this preferred plan concept. The maps that are here are what were presented to the public at the beginning of the month. Yesterday, a memo was sent out to the council and the commission with revised maps, as well as a list of the changes. Those changes are detailed changes, so moving a line here, changing a parcel here, but the concepts remain the same, both in what's in this presentation, what was released to the public, and what's before you to be acting on tonight. So, based on all of this outreach, we did reach several points of consensus. We found that there was broad support for building up around Courthouse Square, having an intense, dense downtown, sky's the limit kind of feeling. There weren't really too many complaints about having our tall buildings be located in the downtown core. But there was also a lot of comfort with the idea of the village centers that was presented in one of the alternatives. So, creating a sense of place and identity for the neighborhoods that support our downtown. And then, of course, creating connectivity between them so that it's easy to understand how to get from one part of downtown to another, and to get to and from downtown itself. We also heard a lot of feedback regarding Santa Rosa Creek. It's a great amenity for any downtown to have a waterway, especially one that's already been improved with walking paths and bike paths. Right now, the creek is not seeing the type of use that I think we as a city would like to see it used. There are safety concerns, so getting that perception of the use of the creek, but also changing developments so that it actually addresses the creek. And we get eyes on the creek and it starts to be used as a amenity, but also for recreation and for a way of getting around without having to resort to a vehicle. We also heard a lot of feedback about downtown connectivity related to something like a trolley or even city bus, just rebranding to move around the downtown. We had the Park Smart Shuttle, which didn't work in the past. That was because it had very low ridership as part of a long-term visioning plan. This plan envisions the future having the visitors and the residents downtown that would support something like that. I did a downtown loop. And then I also mentioned previously the idea of leveraging public lands to get some of these catalyst projects. So City Hall would be one of those, as well as several of our surface parking lots that are underutilized in the heart of downtown. So as I mentioned, we have these two visions. One is the big city urban core. And we'd really look to enhance the street, the feel on the street for that area, both for people that are driving through, but also people who are walking around or having lunch or having dinner or going out at night. And you'll notice as we move forward for some of these maps, we didn't anticipate a wholesale change to our downtown. As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, our downtown includes a lot of well-established neighborhoods, historic districts. So what we did was we focused in on areas where there was potential for change, potential for development. These are areas where there is underutilized land, where there's city property, or where there's vacant property, also proximity to existing transit. And so we found these kind of cluster areas that are demonstrated on this map. And you'll see as we move forward to talk about the different changes that are proposed as part of this plan alternative, they roughly coincide with these areas where change is anticipated. So in the downtown, we do have this vision for taller buildings. People really embracing the urban streetscape. But then we also have, as I mentioned, those neighborhood centers. So a focal point for these neighborhoods, usually a park or civic space. And probably also an increase in density and intensity in these areas as well. Not as high as in the core. But also, as I mentioned, there's capacity for very many residential units and there's a need for that. So it can't all be concentrated in one area. So we do envision adding housing throughout the downtown, mainly in these areas where we expect development to occur. Our land uses reflect this vision. As I mentioned previously, the other plan had 13 different land uses. In the interest of simplifying things and creating flexibility, we've distilled it down to four land uses that we're proposing for the downtown. You'll notice that each of these land uses also includes the mixed use term. That's that idea of flexibility. So while we have a target audience for each of these different land uses, we do wanna build in the flexibility that as development occurs, it can happen the way it would naturally happen rather than a prescribed document. That's a snapshot in time. So I'll briefly go through the users that we're looking to really accommodate these four land uses towards. The core mixed use is our downtown core. As I said, that's our business center. That's where people are, our employment centers are. That's where our cultural and civic spaces are located. And that's also where we have high density urban living occurring. Then the next one that I'll talk about is our station mixed use. That's more visitor oriented. So that's taking advantage of the fact that we do have the smart station coming into our downtown. So that will accommodate people that are coming to Santa Rosa to go shopping, to have a meal, but also for entertainment. Something that has changed in this plan since it was released at the beginning of the month of November was the area of Roberts Avenue, which is in the southwest portion of this map. That area's traditionally been separated from the downtown, both in perception, but also in the fact that it's got railroad tracks and a highway overpass physically separating it. It's also a gateway into downtown for Roseland, which is, as I mentioned, directly adjacent to our downtown plan area to the Southwest. And so there's a lot of potential for that area. In the previous plan, it was designated for 100% housing. We haven't had any movement on that front in the time since this plan's been originated. So with this plan, we are looking to have it be part of that station mixed use, which could encourage something like a stadium or an entertainment complex, something like the Barlow, where it's a cluster of restaurants and other types of uses. That'll be a draw for visitors. And we wanna really improve that connection between this area and the station. As the bird flies, they're very close, but just in physically moving between those two spaces, it's very difficult. So really dragging the station used down and to include this area is something that we envision with this plan. The next land use designation is maker mixed use. This is another one that resulted from our outreach efforts and particularly in response to our meetings with the Maxwell Court neighborhood. That area is an established industrial area. There are successful businesses there. In the previous plan, they were rendered essentially legal non-conforming. It was also another area that was envisioned for 100% housing in the future. So in our conversations with them, they did express interest in allowing housing in that area. Many of them said they have to seismically retrofit their buildings. They'd like to add a couple of units so that their employees have a place that they can live and also work in the same area. And with the announcement from Bodine, the asphalt plant that they plan on vacating their space, it also frees up a lot of space for us to reach those housing needs without displacing any of the existing businesses. So the maker mixed use land use allows for light industrial businesses to operate and exist compatibly with residential. A nearby local example would be the warehouse district in Petaluma where you have distilleries, light industrial auto shops, and also medium density housing right next door to each other and it's a successful neighborhood. And then lastly, I mentioned we have an area that's our job center. We have a visitor oriented area. We have our business, our industrial oriented area. The last one is neighborhood mixed use and that is where we're mainly addressing residential needs. So that's where you'll have predominantly residential development, but it is still mixed use so we'll be supportive of commercial uses, but they would be neighborhood supporting. So coffee shops, small bodegas or grocery stores that would be supporting that neighborhood. So now I'd like to talk about another big change that we were proposing with this plan which is the change from the traditional development standards and unit per acre density measurement to the concept of floor to area ratio. And I'm going to ask my assistant, Ms. Hartman, to please present a little activity that we... I used to pass out the legos. Yeah. So just to help demonstrate this concept a little in another way. The idea of floor to area ratio is you set a ratio. So development can occur within an envelope that's created by the ratio of the square footage of your parcel to the amount of building that you're allowed to create. So a very simple example would be if you have an FAR of one on a 1,000 square foot parcel, you can build 1,000 square feet of building. So that can be a one story building that covers the entire parcel and has 1,000 square feet on that first floor or it could be a two story building that covers half the parcel and has two stories with 500 square feet each. The legos that are being passed around right now is an FAR of six. And the activity that we did this morning was we just took the same square Lego piece. That's your parcel.  So legos that would be six times the area of that parcel. And then three different planners had fun putting them together in different ways. So it's just an example that you can have this variation in building form. Again, building in that flexibility. But it does allow us to set some sort of framework for how development work will occur and what that general vision is for an area. A lot of the feedback that we received from the development community was that they don't want us to just say, there's no height limits, there's no limit to development because it gets very difficult to value land to create a concept for what kind of project would be proposed. So they do need some kind of structure framework. So FAR seemed like a good way to do that while still building in that flexibility. Another key concept with the floor area ratio change would be that we don't want to penalize parts of a building that are not providing housing or commercial uses. So including structured parking or mechanical systems, those don't count into the FAR calculation. We did pretty extensive outreach with the development community on how we would respond to FAR. And that was some of the feedback that we received was not to include those high cost construction elements that aren't actually serving the needs. So that's part of that change. We also heard that they'd like to see a general boost in overall FAR throughout the downtown. So that is also reflected in the maps that we put together for this concept. And as I mentioned, there are examples of how this flexibility can occur. The building on the slide right now is in San Francisco. It's 5.4 FAR. We have some local examples, the Barnes & Noble downtown. That's an FAR of 0.84, so it's under one FAR. Potential construction that could occur on the Pedersen's furniture lot, including the flag lot, which would be all parking, which I mentioned would not be calculated into that calculation, could be a six-story building. And in that case, would have an FAR of 2.4. So they're not very high FARs.  The US Bank, which is our densest or most intense building in the downtown, that one has an FAR of 4.25, and it's a roughly zero lot line building. That's a vertical column. And so what we are proposing is in the core, reflecting the land use, reflecting that vision, would be a maximum FAR of eight. And then flagging down as we move away from that downtown core to six in some of the areas where we envision higher density development. And then lower FARs in areas where we still wanna see development occur, where we still think it's going to occur, but we also see the need to scale down as we move away from the core. So that's where these ratios are reflected. As I mentioned previously, based on the response from the development community, we did give an overall just boost to these FARs. So it's a high ceiling for what these FARs could support. We don't envision in the near future having projects that are going to reach that maximum build out. They'll probably be much lower than what's allowed. But we do hope that in the future, we start to get enough development that it can make products that start to push the limits on this, pencil out and be a part of the downtown. And at such point, we still don't want this plan to then become a barrier. So we'll be building flexibility into FAR so that if at some point, development starts to cap out on the maximum FAR. We do have a bonus FAR that's available for community benefits. So similar to our bonus density that we have presently, including things such as affordable housing or daycare or paying into a fund that could then create road enhancements or road improvements, public art, public parking, things like that, that our community benefits, a project could feed into those and then have a boost to that FAR. The details of how that would work would be something that we'd move forward, drilling down to the details during the next two phases of this process. But we would like feedback from the commission and the council as to if this is the right approach. And just as a reference, the map up on the screen right now is the existing FAR. It's a rough GIS exercise, but it shows that the majority of the downtown is less than one FAR. And even in the core, which is our densest area, the highest is that US bank building at under a four and a half FAR. So another aspect as we kind of create this flexibility in how building design can take place, we wanted to create these design considerations. This is really looking at sense of place as well as transition areas. So you'll see these transition edges that are the Hound's Toothmark throughout the map. And these are areas where perhaps it's in the downtown. A lot of the feedback we had was that we don't want tall buildings that are going to be blocking out all light and a feeling of openness in the downtown. So those are design considerations that would go into construction. Also adjacent to our preservation districts, that edge needs special treatment on how the building is designed. And we envision this not as a set of standards or rules, but more a toolbox of different approaches that building design can take to address this stated need. Another thing you'll notice on this map is the arrows pointing towards the creek. I mentioned earlier, a lot of the feedback we had was that we need to really celebrate this creek as an amenity. So this would encourage development to orient towards the creek. So new development would front on the creek, but also any kind of changes or modifications or remodels to existing development, which there is a lot of along the creek should also talk to the creek. So this can come in the form of changing your main building entrance or reorienting your parking lot or taking a couple of parking spaces and creating an outdoor employee lunch area that's also addressing the creek. But and we're open to creative ideas on how this is achieved, but it's something that we do wanna see in the future as a part of this plan. And then I'll also point out, there's a hash mark on this map that says active ground floor requirement. As I mentioned earlier, in the response to a planning commissioner's question, the traditional mixed use development model was retail on the ground floor, residential above. That model has not worked in the past and it's not working now, especially with the retail environment, the way it is. So what we'd like to do is in key areas where we really need activity on the street level, something like a retail store or a coffee shop is great if you can make it work, it's welcome. But we're also open to other ideas on activating the street. So that can be, it could be a residential oriented project that has a amenity space or a workout space that has full lazing on the street and really interacts with the street. It could be a model of housing where you have stoop development, you have lots of front doors and just activity occurring. And it can also be another idea that we hear about in the future because it hasn't been thought up yet. But we want to create that open opportunity for actually activating the street and creating a sense of place, especially in these key intersections and corridors. And then the last map and concept that I'd like to talk about is the connectivity. That was a majority of feedback that we received talked about actually connecting these areas of our downtown and what the feel is on the street and how the experience is for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as members of our disability community. And so a few key concepts that we're including in the preferred plan concept would be road diets. So these are already part of our bike and ped master plan. But on Medicino Avenue, Santa Rosa Avenue and E Street, the idea of a road diet is essentially you take away traveling and you repurpose that real estate for other uses. So it could be improved and widened sidewalks. It can be bull bouts or traffic humming measures. It can be bicycle facilities. But basically you're taking some of the space that's given through traffic and devoting it more to that streetscape feel. And many studies show that it actually doesn't slow down traffic at all. It actually improves safety and traffic flow. So those are components of this plan. New roadway connections are being proposed, including the extension of Donahue to connect up to that Maxwell Court neighborhood. And then bicycle and pedestrian improvements, especially on the east-west corridor. We've had a lot of feedback about our underpasses and just generally moving from the east side of 101 to the west side. The main focus of attention has been the Santa Rosa Plaza Mall. The existing 2007 plan does call for a full vehicle access road to be bulldozed through 4th Street, to connect 4th Street on both sides of Highway 101 in the mall. We have not heard from Simon, the current operator of the mall, that that's something that they'd like to do. In the past couple of years of having this plan, we haven't seen that being proposed. It is private property, so we can't, as a city, actually make that happen unless there's a wholesale redevelopment that would then justify that ask. But we have been, I mentioned having all the different players at the table. Obviously the mall is a major stakeholder in our downtown, so they have been a part of this conversation. And we've talked about how do you establish this connection without necessarily needing to punch a road through. And so that's really improving the wayfinding and the accessibility for pedestrians and for bicyclists to get from east to west. So that's something that we're actively in conversation, but it's also something that we'll be looking for guidance from the commission and the council on how that should be approached. The current plan is proposing to abandon the idea of a full vehicle road in preference of pursuing pedestrian and bicycle connectivity. Another key area on this connectivity map would be the connection from Roberts Avenue, the area to the southwest with our west third street and the railroad square area of our downtown. And the 2007 plan also calls for a full vehicle road. In that plan, the existing Roberts Road from the south, Roberts Avenue from the south would take a jog to the east, go under the existing overpass where the smart tracks and Joe Ridota Trail currently go under Highway 12 and then reconnect with Roberts Avenue on the north back to third street. We have reviewed that in the past. Our city engineer has gone out and taken measurements and it seems not feasible, if not impossible to actually have that type of road alignment. Another option would be to punch the road through, so extend Roberts Avenue to the north, create a new underpass under Highway 12 and then connect to Roberts Avenue on the north side of Highway 12. That would involve working with Caltrans who owns the right of way, the engineering costs associated with constructing a new tunnel as well as acquiring right of way from private development because there's not a clear connection between those roads. And then a third option, which is being presented in the preferred plan concept would be to abandon that requirement for a new road connection and instead focus those resources on, again, bicycle and pedestrian enhancement. In this case, taking advantage of the existing Principal Real Greenway, Joe Ridota Trail and smart multi-use path that all converge on the existing Highway 12 overpass or underpass and really improving the way finding and the experience of connecting between these two areas. As I mentioned earlier, we envision a catalytic project taking place in the Roberts Avenue area. This would be a nexus associated with any of those projects would be to improve this connectivity and really create a clear, easy to understand straightforward connection between this area and the downtown smart station. This would also be, there's a symbology on this map called streetscape enhancements. So that's different from improvements where you're widening a road or building traffic lights. This is more envisioned as striping or way finding the idea of parklets where you take parking spaces and convert them to public space and just improving the experience along these corridors for bicycles, pedestrians and vehicles. So it's also associated with development in the Roberts Avenue area would be streetscape enhancement to Dunn Avenue and to Sebastopol Road and Olive Street. And we have these types of enhancements in other parts of the downtown, including along 4th Street into the undeveloped, previously owned by smart parcel to the west of the downtown smart station as well as the Canary site connecting to the creek in that case. And then also just looking at the existing underpasses so on 6th Street and 7th Street and 3rd Street and really improving the experience of using those areas. And this map does also include that downtown connector loop that I mentioned previously. And we have a graphic of a cute little trolley on this map. That's not necessarily how it will occur. As I mentioned, it could be rebranding of city bus using our existing transit infrastructure but really including that ease of moving around the downtown by whatever means you want to which could include vehicles but could also be bicycle, pedestrian or using our transit options. So to summarize the key moves that are a part of this plan concept, one switching away from traditional development standards and units per acre to this FAR form of regulating development. We also want to waive parking requirements for projects that are within walking distance of transit. This doesn't mean eliminating parking downtown. What this means is that we no longer want the city to be again, snapshot in time telling development how much parking it needs to include. Development will have to include its own parking. There's the only way to get a project financed and to have a marketable project is to include some form of parking but we want to allow that flexibility for the market to tell us what kind of parking they need. Also as technology changes and vehicle demand changes, we'd like that parking ratio, that's an inner development to change with it. And we also want to allow the flexibility of leveraging the existing parking infrastructure we have or several underutilized parking garages in the downtown. So those can be used for commercial purposes as well as residential purposes. So that's the thinking behind this, this waving of the parking standard. As I mentioned, also the active ground floor requirements, being flexible but also requiring that we activate the streetscape, pursuing the public and private partnerships to get some of these catalytic projects going, enabling our public spaces. Another component of this project that I didn't mention on the map is previously we've had a requirement for community and neighborhood parks. It's the traditional definition of a park. So many acres devoted to outdoor open space that's programmed for park uses. What ends up happening with that type of development is that we say a general area where this park needs to take place. Development occurs on every other parcel except for the last person holding the bill then has to build that park and they can't build a project to go with it. Park never gets built and the parcel remains vacant. So we're looking to enable public spaces both through civic spaces, traditional public parks and also private spaces that can be programmed or enabled to have pop-up markets or recreation or some sort of public use. That's another one of those amenities that can go into that bonus FIR that I mentioned earlier. And then lastly, improving the way finding that connectivity and the experience and the clarity of how you get from point A to point B in the downtown, there's a lot of potential for how we can address that. So those are the key concepts that we're looking to move forward in this plan. Specifically the areas that we want direction from the council and from the planning commission are these five items they were sent out in the memo that was sent out to this body yesterday. One is we would like guidance on the four mixed use types that we're proposing. Is this the right idea? Should we continue with that? I just mentioned the change from traditional neighborhood and community park to these urban park and civic spaces. The Roberts Avenue connection. I gave kind of three ways that we can go about. The keeping it the way it is currently in the plan utilizing the existing underpass, creating a new underpass or staff's recommendation which would be to eliminate that vehicular connection instead focus resources on bike and pad. I should also add the caveat at this point that we still have to do the, I mentioned the next phase is the real detailed modeling on how this looks. Depending on what kind of feedback we get from this group, it'll either be the primary project or an alternative that we study. But we will have to look at the feasibility of any of these changes to circulation. So it's possible that in spite of whatever guidance we get here, it may or may not be a requirement to have that vehicular connection. So we'd have to readdress that once we have that additional information. The fourth item would be the boundaries for our new land use and FAR districts. One of the comment letters that we received recently that was passed on was talking about in the area of the southwest portion of the St. Rose neighborhood. There's an area, as I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation that we applied land uses and FAR to areas where we anticipate development occurring. That's one of those areas where development could occur. So that's why we included it, but we'd like guidance from the Board and Commission on, or from the Council and Commission on whether those boundaries are correct. Just to specifically address that one area, we have revisited it and it's currently at eight FAR in the proposed plan. We'd be comfortable changing that to be six FAR, or no, four FAR to reflect the other properties that are in the area. So it's kind of hard to focus in on this map, but it's the, if you look at the downtown core area where we have our eight FAR, it is the northwest most corner of it. That block is surrounded by parking facilities for the mall. We do have a project currently being proposed to redevelop that area. So we do want to include it in the framework for how this plan moves forward, but it would make sense to change that FAR from the highest intensity, eight, down to four FAR, which would reflect the parcels along 7th Street where the museum is, and also directly leading into the St. Rose neighborhood. So that's just specifically to talk about that parcel. That is something that we are looking to change and that is part of that detailed work that we will be doing as the next phase and the outreach and the feedback will still be welcome throughout these next phases. We are looking for the general guidance today to move forward on these broad concepts. And then lastly is the issue with the St. Rose Plaza Mall. The same question as we have for Roberts Avenue is the existing plan for full vehicular road, the same vision in this plan, or would some alternative make sense? And again, in this case, staff is recommending pedestrian and bicycle improvements as opposed to a full road build out. And so with that, we are open to another round of questions and I'm sure there will be many and I'm happy to go back to any of these previous maps. And we do have representatives from most of our departments with city staff here to address any specifics that maybe weren't addressed in this broad overview. Thank you. Great, thank you, Patrick, for that presentation. So again, for the council and the commission, we'll ask questions. We'll then imagine we have some cards from members of the public and then after we hear that, we'll be asking everyone to answer those five questions. So, Chair Suska, do you wanna go through the planning commission first for any questions? Right, and just to echo the mayor that this is a time for questions about what we've heard and we'll have plenty of opportunity to give our comments as to the things that Mr. Streeter is asking us to do after the public hearing. So any questions? Yes, Commissioner Duggan. Yeah, you just kind of touched on this, talking about the St. Rose district and maybe changing that one parcel that's noted as FAR eight. So in the districts that have the combining designation for historic, cause I know that they've pretty much bordered downtown and the downtown core, what additional planning process or hoops do projects are they gonna have to go through if they're on one of these parcels that's got the combining district? So we do have, I mentioned our preservation districts, several of them are within our downtown and that's implemented through zoning with the H combining district. And as part of this plan, we are, in most areas we are not even proposing any change to these areas, but there are transition edges where we have development can be assumed to take place and we do have these provisions in place. We are not proposing to change any of the zoning provisions that we have in place for the H combining district. So it does still require landmark alteration for most projects. It requires meeting the standards for a preservation district. There are also height considerations. So within a preservation district, there's a height limit of I believe 35 feet or two stories unless the review authority can make certain findings that whatever is proposed above that will be compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. So as of this draft, we are keeping all of those provisions in place, but it is something that could be amended if we receive feedback that that's something that the council would like to see. So if I'm understanding this correctly, like on that one block that we're talking about next to the mall. So even if you put an FAR of six, it still has to meet the requirements for height requirements unless you can make the findings that it's for some other reason compatible. Yeah, and it would also still be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. So the secretary of interior standards for development of historic properties. So most of the properties within our preservation districts and the district itself is considered historic. And so still subject to all of those state guidelines as well. Okay, thank you. Councillor Peterson. Related to the historic district question. So my understanding from the memo from diet and Vadia is that we're looking at 50 years old and greater. We haven't had a comprehensive survey since 1989. Do you have a sense of what types of error, I guess the scope of the buildings that potentially could be historic if there was a new survey? Yeah, so I mentioned the secretary of interior standards. One of those qualifications for a project that could be historic as if it's, or for a property that could be historic as if it's greater than 50 years old. A majority of our properties in the downtown are older than 50 years old. That's anything built before 1969. So I wouldn't say majority, but we do have many historic properties. So that is something that we'd like to address as we, I mentioned one of the goals for this is to be able to streamline development and try to anticipate in advance any of the issues that may arise. So historic resources is one of those issues. So we are looking in this plan to address, at least for catalyst sites, the historic resource inventories. So to determine whether or not a site is considered historic, and then also any mitigations that would be necessary for adaptive reuse of that site to occur. We are also beyond this plan seeking funding sources to expand that exercise throughout our downtown. And as we move forward in the general plan to look at how that can be applied throughout the city, because we are aware that our existing inventories are dated and the methodologies are different today than they were back then, in addition to many more properties becoming eligible in the time since. Thank you, Mr. Calia. Good thing you moved forward. I couldn't see you over there. What determined a catalyst site? Can you talk us through that a little bit? Yeah, so it really goes back down to those clusters of areas where we see development potential. And then the catalyst sites in the updated draft plan concept that was sent out, we have two types now. Previously it was just public areas that had public property that could be then entered into this public-private partnership to have a new development that would kind of invigorate development in the area or set a market comparable. Now in the plan we have the private sites and public sites where we envision catalyst projects taking place. And so it could be an area where we have, the city has an ability to leverage some of the costs in actually getting that project off the ground. But it could also be an area where we're looking for a keystone project to really set the president to get other development to take place. And they roughly align with these different clusters of areas where we do see there's a lot of vacant land or underutilized land. So that's where we wanna see these projects move forward. As we do the final plan and that's adopted, we likely won't have these catalyst sites be a part of that plan. That's more a part of this concept in creating the vision. So in the future, if there was a privately owned site that wanted to potentially be a part of a public-private partnership, they could then go through some kind of process to do that. Yeah, and that's a separate track that we are currently taking right now. So it'll be before the council. I think later this year it is talking about the opportunities for those public-private partnerships. But yeah, the sites in here are basically guideposts for us to, I mentioned previously, doing that on the front-end environmental studies. We have limited resources so that we're looking at those catalyst sites right now to do those studies. But it doesn't preclude any other site from becoming a catalyst site. Commissioner Kripke, okay, Commissioner Carter. Thank you. Early on, you mentioned that you saw capacity and local demand for up to 10,000 housing units in the planning area. Yet we have a problem with the 2007 plan getting the housing off the ground. And it was one of the issues alluded to was nothing is market-proven. So does the plan look to embed housing types that do have some proven marketability or what do we do with the plan to sort of overcome that? There's demand, there's capacity. Nobody wants that type or nobody wants to build that type of housing. Yeah, so the housing type is not something that we've drilled down to on this level. It is something that can be addressed through policy. My caution would be that the marketable housing type today may be different from what it is in the future. So we really, again, would like the development community in the market to be able to determine what is appropriate. But those are policies that as we see certain types of housing types, one of the outreach meetings we went to is with the Disability Services and Legal Center. But for the disability community and for the aging community, that's a difficult housing type to utilize because even if they're built a building code which requires visitability, so you can visit the first floor, that's a whole sector of the community that can't take advantage of any of these housing types. So we do want to be aware of trying to either recommend a certain housing type or have policy that requires a variety and diversity in housing types. So it is something that we'd look at at the policy level but we aren't looking at it yet on this concept level. And jumping all the way back to your schedule diagram, I think we'll be going through environmental review as we're preparing a final plan, area plan for adoption in the spring. Yes, so. You mentioned some upfront CEQA work. Can you say a little bit about how the CEQA process is gonna go and will there be a lot of alternatives to study where some of these circulation alternatives can be looked at through the CEQA process? So we are planning on the majority of the study will be on the preferred plan that we're hoping to get guidance for from this meeting. But we will have alternatives that are visited, especially in areas where we're deviating from the previous plan. And the goal is to have the environmental review be concurrent with our draft plan, which would be concurrent with our updates to our zoning code. So in the past, we've had these different stages for these different documents. And that creates just inherent conflict between them because they're acting on a different times. So we do plan on bundling this all together. And in the spring is when we would release the draft environmental impact report. It'll be a supplement to the existing one that was prepared in 2007. So only in areas where we have changes or new impacts that would be envisioning and that can be created through adding new units or through changes in circulation. So those are the areas that will really be focusing the analysis, but we'll be releasing that draft EIR in addition to the draft plan, which will also be in addition to the updates that we're recommending to our general plan and to our zoning code. And then ultimately it will be up to the council after we do the public review period for those documents to certify the environmental and adopt the plan. So that'll be the final decision-making step. Vice-chair Weeks. Patrick, can you explain a little bit about what neighborhood transition would look like? Or it could be, you said that you would have some type of a toolbox that people could utilize, but can you give us some examples? Yes, so off the cuff, some examples could be the type of glazing that occurs, step backs in buildings. You just saw a saw from our three little Lego pieces right there, the feeling of form and mass differs greatly between just those three examples. And that was planners playing with toys. So when you have actual architects that I know, we would be looking towards what's successful in other areas as we build this toolbox and that's another area that we'd be looking to conduct robust outreach to get that feedback on how we assemble it. But those are some examples on how design can address the feeling of bulk and mass of a building. Patrick, if you wouldn't mind, if you could go back to your preferred plan concept, FAR, slide, and just explain the little asterisk system, sentence about minimum FAR, I wanna understand what that is. Yeah, so originally we had proposed the maximum FARs and it was a range, so we'd have the maximum and a minimum. And that raised some red flags for us because we didn't want to then be setting another requirement that may not be able to be met. An example is on West 3rd, South of Railroad Square, there's a small parcel next to the Hyatt. In the existing plan, it's required to be developed as a two-story building and we've never had any movement on that site. It's remained a gravel lot because nobody could ever make a two-story building take place there without consolidating the surrounding properties. So that was a pitfall we wanted to avoid. At the same time, we didn't want, especially in our catalyst areas, like for instance, adjacent to the smart station, we didn't want an underwhelming project to come forward and be allowed. So that's why we have this asterisk that for catalyst projects, and I mentioned the catalyst icon will fall off in this final plan, but we will have policy for specific areas where we want to see at least the midpoint FAR developed too so that we don't have projects that are underutilizing the space. And that's got a precedent in our existing general plan where in our medium and high density areas, we require density up to the midpoint of the allowed density ranges. Okay, and then I want to understand the neighborhood mixed use designation. Are we mandating that there will be retail or ground floor activity in those areas or the market's gonna drive whether it's housing and how much mixed use retail is there without what we're doing there? For the most part, it's market driven, but I will call your attention to the design considerations where we do have the graphic for ground floor activity requirement. In those areas, we would require, not necessarily retail, but some sort of ground activating user design. But that's right in downtown. It's not out in the MWALL-E area. Am I misunderstanding that? It's not in the MWALL-E area in this graphic, but it is in certain areas like down Santa Rosa Avenue. I think in one of the iterations we had in the Maxwell Court neighborhood. So, and as we do drill down into details, it'll be determining where those areas should be that we'll be looking for feedback. Okay, great. And then finally, Roberts Avenue, the punch through, the reconnection, that was examined and found to be feasible enough in the 2007 plan with housing and reestablished in the Rosin specific plan. So it has been examined and there was an EIR done, but pertinent to the land use being housing at that time. And now we're going to be elevating the land uses. Has it specifically been looked at, that recommendation specifically been looked at to take that punch through out, given that we're elevating land uses. And in two prior plans, it was found to be advisable. Right, so the two prior plans did have the environmental review that found that traffic and circulation would function, assuming that punch through occurred, or it's not a punch through in that case, it'd be a reorienting of the street. So we have not done that level of analysis for this plan, but as I mentioned, that would be one of the two alternatives moving forward would be does the circulation work with that vehicular connection and does it work without the vehicular connection? And it's also, there's the potential that even if we were to find from a circulation functionality level that that connection's not necessary, it is still the city's discretion as to whether or not we want that to be there. So whether or not the modeling shows it, it's still something that we're looking for feedback as to whether that's the appropriate use that we'd like to see in the future for this plan. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, Council, questions? Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You talked to Patrick a little bit about the eyes on the creek and you mentioned the remodeling. Are you saying that as people go to make changes to the existing businesses that are along there, that there's going to be an effort to try to reorient them as well so that they're focused on the creek? That's correct. I'd envision, again, we don't have the details on how it would work, but there'd be some threshold. So if you're changing out some desks in your building, it's not going to trigger that threshold. But if you're doing a full scale facade change to a building, in that case, we would say, well, how are you addressing the creek? Because it says so in the plan that you need to be doing that. And then obviously new development would be subject to that. We do have the Waterways Advisory Committee as well. So their charge is looking at projects that are adjacent to the creek that are being proposed. And this would be another resource that they could then point to to say, how is this project addressing the creek? Excellent. You talked a little bit about the Maxwell area with the rezoning of the, what would we call it, the maker's space or the maker's designation. How does that impact the Baudin site? The, well, actually for the Baudin site, we are proposing the neighborhood mixed use. So that one, we are still looking to have it be predominantly residential. And that was the feedback that we got from the Maxwell Court neighbors when we met with them was that we understand the need for housing. Why don't you put it here where this asphalt on that is vacating. So that area would no longer be eligible to become an industrial site. It would then be designated housing. A difference in this plan for the maker mixed use and the proportions of that neighborhood would be that the existing light industrial uses would be legal conforming. They'd be allowed to be in that neighborhood. Whereas currently right now they're protected with the limited light industrial overlay, but that is set to be reconsidered by the council in 2020. At which case, if that were to go away, they'd become legal non-conforming properties. So in this plan, with the maker mixed use, they would be legal and allowed to operate and maintain their operations there. Okay, and in the meantime, the Bodine site, the asphalt plant would continue to be a legal non-conforming use even under this plan. Correct. Great. Does this concept plan account for the proposed square and railroad square idea? Yeah, that was, we've gotten a lot of support for that. So that's incorporated into this plan. It's in the narrative and it would make its way into our policies. Right. And then with the proposed circulation patterns, particularly around the bicycle connectivity, whether it's the Roberts Avenue area or whether it's fourth street concept, do we, does this plan talk about what classification of bicycle path it would be? Again, with the idea that connectivity only matters if people can actually use it. Yeah, so again, this is on the high level concept point of reference, but as we do get into policy, something that could be incorporated into the plan would be cross sections that show what level of improvements we're looking for for these facilities. Yeah, and I do believe that the bicycle master plan has a lot of that and I just wasn't sure if it gets pulled up into this higher level component. Yeah, we would look for consistency across all the plans. So either incorporating what's existing in the bike and pet master plan or amending that if it is in conflict with whatever is inside of this plan. Yeah, I know that other cities, when they've done their general plans and their specific plans, they've also included with it values that they want to be placed throughout it. And for me, one of them would be that connectivity that we have is protected connectivity for bicycles and pedestrians. Okay, thank you. Great. Other questions? Mr. Chibitz. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, really amazing work. I can't imagine how much time and effort this must have taken you guys.  One question I have, actually a couple of questions, is you mentioned one of the barriers to development. This is an ongoing conversation I'm having with people in the community about how we're gonna get those catalytic projects going. And you mentioned one barrier that we do have control over and that's the under grounding of utilities and helping with utility placement. Are we taking any steps such as aligning our capital improvements budget or is the water department doing the same to try to, I guess, address that particular barrier? I don't really have an answer, but I can defer over to Mr. Keown. Thanks. So as part of this process, all the departments are at the table as we're talking through these projects and part of the plan that's gonna come forward are known improvements that are gonna be needed to be made both on the water, CIP, transportation elements. So those will be a project list. Typically what happens is those projects then get folded into a CIP and then prioritized with the rest of the city's CIP project. So that prioritization does take place and it takes place in front of the council so that you'll have a chance to look at that CIP program and how that's being prioritized. The other, so that's the water which we're, the other thing is there's some things like under grounding power lines which we're finding in the downtown specifically on narrow roads has become an issue. And so we are reaching out to PG and others to determine are there a way that we can work with them to try to get ahead of some of this. But it's costly and expensive and we have to kind of work through different approaches on that but so we are looking at different approaches for both public and private. So in, without going too far into the detail of the CIP budget, I can share with council that just the Fulton Road project exhausted the entire funding for underground and utilities from the 20 act. So that we, those resources are meager. They are out there. This is one of those continuing conversations about where and how much this community has tradition and the city has traditionally invested in these types of enterprises. And so that remains a struggle. And that's why we're also looking at other potential funding sources to address some of these infrastructure conversations. That's why we're exploring things like an enhanced infrastructure district. There are ways to maybe address some of these hurdles. Great. I'll just give you one quick example. When the 2007 plan was adopted with some of the sewer capacities were identified as an issue down Third Street and others. And so part of the CIP program over the next few years was to replace the sewer lines in Third Street and others. So that capacity has been already upsized to try to achieve what the vision was. And fortunately over time water use has gone down so the capacity has essentially increased. So those are the things that we'll be looking at to make sure that we try to get ahead of some of these developments. Good, I appreciate that. I'll be, as we work on the CIP budget going forward, I'll be looking for that. And also now that we're talking about these public-private partnerships to get this going I see that as being a really necessary ingredient in this mix of things we have to do to make downtown viable. Another question, it was kind of unclear to me in this plan, do we have, I think it's called the concept of walkable districts. I'm gonna look to Kristen and the audience to talk to me about it at public comment, but she once brought up with me that the idea of having tables and chairs on the other side of the sidewalk kind of encroaching into the street is a good way to just create energy in the urban space. Is that addressed in this plan? Is this plan even an appropriate place to address such a concept or would that be a separate ordinance? Yeah, this plan, in addition to being a land use and circulation document, it's a visioning document. So establishing that streetscape vision and how to achieve it is something that is within the purview of this plan and its narrative and its policies. Okay, so it's within the purview, but it's not in this particular plan at this time? It's roughly reflected in some of the concepts. For instance, the street enhancement where we talk about parklets as one of the ways of enhancing a street. So that's in line with that line of thinking. And as we do build on the details, that's the area that we'd be looking for feedback in that regard. Okay, I'll save that for my comments, but obviously I'm pretty supportive of that concept being in this plan. Let's see. My final question is, it was touched a little bit about how the programmatic EIR is gonna help increase, or actually I should say decrease the permitting process time. Could you give us kind of a walkthrough of, okay, if somebody walked through today and they met the FAR requirements, they met the land use requirements, what steps are they gonna have to go through until they've got a building permit? Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. That's one of the key elements of this plan is that, as I mentioned, we're trying to simplify the process, and part of that is addressing the environmental review, which for many projects is the largest degree of uncertainty moving forward. So for a project that is consistent with the vision in this plan, there would be some level of design review. As we mentioned, we've worked to streamline that process. Design review would be the discretionary stage of the review, so it would mean that that's when the environmental review would take place. Because the project is consistent with this plan, which has an adopted environmental impact report, it would likely be eligible for an exemption from further CEQA review. So any of the potential impacts to resource areas would have been addressed in this report, and the general rule is anything that's not peculiar to the site. So if it's an infill site that is within our downtown, that's part of this analysis, likely, since it's meeting the vision, it would then be exempt from environmental review. So the only discretionary stage would be design review. Once that is approved, you move on to the building permit, which is all ministerial, so there's no more uncertainty there. It's, do you meet the standard or not? Okay, so there's no planning commission in that process? Okay, interesting. So I was gonna actually raise the question of, I know that we have a policy in place, although the details of which are fuzzy for me that doesn't have design review if you have an affordability component in this area. How does that, I guess, complement it? If somebody has affordability as a component, is there essentially no discretionary review? Or am I missing the mark here, David? We have reduced review for affordable projects. Again, that's when they go for concept. But there also is legislation coming out of Sacramento that exempts a project from discretionary review. The same thing happened about a year or two ago with accessory dwelling units, that unless we have a design standard in place, we can test it against our adopted standards, but they have to be those yes or no answers. So that's essentially eliminating that discretionary review. So yes, the state law is saying, since affordable housing is something that we need, they're going to take that discretion away from cities. And so in those cases, yes, there would not be environmental review and there would not be city discretionary review either. Okay, thank you. Mrs. Weissmaier. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again, fantastic work and most of my questions have been covered by my fellow council members. I am wondering if there's still room in this project or in this visioning exercise to add enticements or encouragements for universal design? Yeah, so as I mentioned, we are looking to remove requirements, but include incentives. So if universal design, and we'll be looking for the feedback and comments from this group, if that's something that we want to incorporate into our policy to incentivize, absolutely that can be included. Okay, and I'm curious to know how we arrived at the 8.0 for FAR? That's based on not just building or products that have been proposed in this area, but also other jurisdictions we looked to, including San Diego recently adopted FAR for their specific plan, Sacramento as well, and looking at the types of developments that are in line with a vision that's similar to what we would have for our downtown, similar form bulk mass and densities. That's where we actually established six as probably an appropriate FAR, but hearing concerns from the development community, that's why we raised it to eight to really just not be putting any caps on the development and not trying to create any additional hindrances. Okay, that's good. I'm curious to know, given that the council seems fairly unified from what I've heard from my colleagues over the last year around the importance of development and the need for housing, and this plan seems fairly comprehensive and I'm going to avoid getting into the details, but I'm curious to know if there's anything else that you think we've left on the table in terms of enticements to help developers decide that Santa Rosa is a great place to come and build housing and support our community. Oh, that's a heavy question to put on me. It's okay if you don't get it perfectly. This is an opportunity to editorialize, but there's anything else you can think of. There was, and I would have probably brought it up during the presentation, but there is a lot out there that I'm sure I'm not able to think of, so that's actually a great opportunity for me to mention. We do have a website for this plan. It's plandowntownsr.com. That's the easiest way for anyone with an idea or something that should be included in this plan to get in touch with us, but also my email and my phone number up there. We are open to suggestions, creative ideas, critiques we want to hear at all. After the public comments, you'll get about 13 people with great ideas. I'm ready for that, but it is a good point. We can't think of anything, of everything, and so we really are, depending on the community, to reach out and give us their feedback and expertise as well. Okay, and that's at plansr.com. Plan downtownsr.com. Thank you. Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One more quick follow-up question. In this plan, how many vehicles, excuse me, or not vehicles, housing units are not included or near the one-quarter mile mark. Is there gonna be a lot of housing units that will require parking? Yeah, that is actually something that, on our next phase, we do wanna drill down to. That's a question that we've raised ourselves. So we are looking into what areas would be affected by this waving of the parking requirement. We're assuming, because it applies to transit hubs, which are the smart station and the transit mall, but also to high-frequency transit stops, which are major arterials, it would apply to most of the areas, especially areas that we envision development occurring, but getting that actual number would be valuable, so we are looking into that. I appreciate that, and if this comes back, you'll probably just let us know then, or if you could email me when you figure that out to let me know. The reason why I'm asking is, I don't personally, I recognize from the lending and finance perspective that it's probably necessary to have some parking spaces, and at the end of the day, that's probably gonna what determines how much parking there is, but if there's any flexibility on the lending and finance side that a developer could be working with, personally I'm not that interested in a lot of parking. In fact, I think there's two alternatives that we should explore. One is, I was made aware of an organization called Green Trip, and one of the programs that they work on is having developers with rentals actually basically buy bus vouchers, which would then help us increase ridership on our transit lines, get people off the road, help with traffic, so looking at something like that in lieu of a parking space, if that's an option for the developer. The second one would be, is obviously master leases in our own garage, if it's near our own garage, and increasing usership there, so I just wanted to give those to you guys. You think, oh, sorry, I just wanted to respond to that question real quick. I think you brought, bring up a good point. One of the things that we did find in the old plan were some inherent barriers to utilizing parking in off time, so parking garages are available, parking spots that are empty at night and folder in the day. So part of what this plan is trying to do is create that flexibility to have those conversations with developers in a different way than we've been able to have before to try to encourage that. So, and I think we've had a few recent conversations with people that are looking at how to utilize that the garage is at night when they're empty and then flip it on the other side during the day. So I think what this plan, again, is trying to do is remove some of those barriers that we found and we've heard from the development community and we've actually run into ourselves to try to address the issue that you just raised. And some of them just staying on the parking, isn't the whole concept of unbundling the parking with the housing, because I know mayors and council members had a presentation about that. And again, I think, won't the market kind of dictate how much that unbundling will occur if there's demand for that? That's correct. And the previous plan had a lot of great ideas for how that could take place, but then I mentioned conflicts within our own documents. There was another provision that said you must provide all of your parking on the site or else go through a cumbersome process to change that. So that's why we are trying to simplify and really let the market tell us how much parking they need on their site or how we can be flexible on addressing their parking needs. Great. Can you just pull up a slide six, just the timeline? Just want to check in, see and realize that yes, we're in December of 2019. So the, and I know we've had community-wide issues where we've canceled meetings and things are getting jammed. Can you give us a realistic timeline expectation? Again, I am asking this before you've heard from the planning commission and council, but what impacts have our other community-wide issues have or will have on this timeline? So it's hard to parse out where the loss of staff time based on responding to community issues has affected the timeline. In addition to as we've revised what our scope is to really maximize outreach and try to reflect the feedback that we've been hearing. So it has resulted in the previous plan was a nine-month timeline. So from when we started in January, we would have assumed a final adoption to occur probably in September. So now we are looking at final adoption probably occurring in April or May, possibly June. So we are extending the time period, but it's hard to say what the causes are of that in addition to making sure that this is a document that once adopted, we don't have to amend in the future has resulted in some extension of that timeline. So the city manager's gonna step in here. It is, you hear the team is really trying to work hard for to produce this document. I would be leaning towards the summer before we're really talking about the resolution here. There are just too many places that this organization is playing catch up and it's not just this team, it's our legal team, it's other public works. So I would just be ask you all, we were really trying to deliver it very soon, but to be patient because of those community-wide, let's call it what it is, public safety shutoffs and a fire that basically took us offline for six weeks this past fall. No, and I appreciate that, Mr. City Manager. And that's why I brought it up, just to clarify expectations here because I'm very appreciative of Patrick, you, your assistant and the rest of the teams, the amount of outreach that's been done it's been really incredible because I think this is gonna be a document that is gonna go on, whether or not it's future-proof, I think, I hope you're on the right track here, Patrick. I did wanna just also add that we do have the existing station area plan, so it's not like development can occur right now. While there are barriers to it, it's still a very valuable and useful plan for addressing things like the CEQA issue, that also hasn't adopted EIR. And as I mentioned, there are several other initiatives taking place right now concurrently with this plan update. So, by all means, as development is coming forward, we are working closely to start to get to some of those countless projects happening even now before we adopt the final plan. Great. Okay, let's go to- Mr. Mayor, go ahead, Mr. Olives. Patrick, what input or feedback did you receive from the Roseland community related to the Roberts Road connection? So we didn't receive, we held a meeting with the Roseland community at the Roseland Community Library two Saturdays ago. And we didn't receive too much specific feedback about how that alignment should occur. What we did hear was that the connectivity between Roseland and the rest of downtown needs to be addressed. So they, even in this presentation, we're showing downtown, but Roseland's not on this map. So I'm just making sure that it's, they're not within this downtown barrier, but they are certainly a part of this downtown conversation. So that was the feedback that we received is that we need to be able to, we need to be doing more to create that sense of identity and connectivity. Thank you. Mr. Sauer. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much for this. It's very exciting and it's, I'm speaking to the timeline right now and you just addressed it in part and I appreciate that. My concern, this is a very valuable situation that we have the Planning Commission and the Council together speaking about this yet on the second time. And you have been eating and breathing as this plan for like you mentioned for a year and a half. My question has to do with, as we move forward, are there any restrictions on the grant and do we have the luxury of time? Because I would love to have the luxury of time. This is probably one of the most important decisions that these two bodies will be making in their careers on this Council. We've been dealing with a lot of media issues over the last couple of years and this is one of them. So my concern is, do we have the luxury of time? Will this body be able to come together perhaps, if necessary, again, before the draft is approved to be able to come to agreement if there are some sticky issues that we might still be struggling with that either are brought up by ourselves, the people in the community that we speak to or the community at large? I don't think luxury is an operative word I'd use ever with this project involved. As far as the grant with MTC, I believe it's a 36 month window for using those funds. So even with the delays we've had with this project, we'll still be far below that. So there is space for the scope of unscheduled to extend if necessary. But we would like some certainty coming out of this meeting because as you mentioned, it is very valuable to have the Planning Commission and the Council giving feedback. We'd like to be able to drill down on the next stage to really be focusing on details. So there will be opportunities prior to the final adoption to bring in front of these groups. We've also been checking in regularly with our other boards and commissions, including design review and cultural heritage board. So there will be additional opportunities before the final yes or no vote. But we would like to continue with a sense of urgency and try to have solid answers and direction moving forward at the close of this meeting. Mainly on those five issues. Those five issues are key with the assumption that the rest of the plan as a concept would be able to move forward. But if there are other issues that we need to be brought to light, we'd like to do it today. Excellent, thank you. Great, any other questions? See none. We'll go to public comment. First up, Michael Martini followed by Terry Shore. Good afternoon. My name's Mike Martini. I live on Austin Way here in Santa Rosa just outside of this core area. And I find myself walking downtown quite frequently. And I ride my bike through the downtown area at least three or four times a week. I'm here today to commend the council, commend the commission and commend staff for taking a look at the plan. It would be easy to be a cynic, especially given that the plan is 12 years old and you've produced 100 units of housing. It's also easy to be a cynic because we know that there's a room over in planning that shelves are full of plans that have been developed that have gathered dust. But the reason for my optimism, my reason for the optimism for this council is this council, this planning commission and the community recognize the need for housing. One of those plans that sits on the shelf and gathers dust offers us a cautionary tale. And that is a station area plan that was developed for the smart site. And if you forgive my seasonal metaphor, we put so many ornaments on that tree it couldn't stand. So I caution you here today that as a body, you do not design, you plan and you give them a framework that the designers are able to fulfill. The first thing that government can do is in the area of infrastructure and connectivity. And I really appreciate the comments that were made about that. It is imperative that people can get in and out of and around in a particular area. We saw this because of the fires. I'm here to speak very strongly in favor of the full connection of Robert's Avenue because if you want that area to succeed, you need to be able to get people in and out of. The second issue is the issue of process. And I appreciate the comments about streamlining. And clearly in California, moving from 18 months to six months is streamlining. I'm here to remind the council and everyone else that there are places in the country that people can break ground in six months. So streamlining is somewhat relative. And I would ask you to continue to look at that. But the more important one is the issue of CEQA and the ability, you cannot waive CEQA, but you can get a lot of those things out of the way. And I'm very, very encouraged by having that be a part of the plan. So I thank you all for your service and your attention to this plan. I agree with council member Sawyer what you're deciding today is gonna have a lasting and significant impact on this community. Thank you. Thank you. Terry Shore, followed by Ray Holly. Ray Holly, followed by Nina Rizzo. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. Ray Holly with the Sonoma County Library. Our downtown library is listed as a catalyst site. So we're happy about that because we've been a catalyst for over 150 years. I wanted to tell you a little more about it. The busiest branch of our 16 location system is the central library here in downtown Santa Rosa. The library is open seven days a week with more hours than any other branch, 58 hours a week of full-time comprehensive service. Almost 20,000 people a month walk through our doors at 211 East Street and they check out about 35,000 items a month. Santa Rosa residents come downtown to learn about their families at our history and genealogy library. They come to improve their lives at our adult literacy center. United States military veterans come to central to our veteran center. The next generation of video and audio entrepreneurs come to take advantage of our digital camera library. Some of them come on, come down, they put on special headphones and they play our electric piano using our large collection of sheet music. Every day in central we hold events and programs. Some are small like story times and homework help. Some are massive like the day in September when Santa Rosa middle school students came to the library to connect via radio to the international space station. And we wanna thank Vice Mayor Fleming for attending that day and inspiring those students. Central is the largest library in our system at more than 60,000 square feet. Its history stretches back to the mid 1800s. In fact, the central Santa Rosa library was the 14th public library established in the state of California. It's always been right downtown. Our customers are your customers. They live downtown or they come downtown. They park, stroll, eat and shop. We are a part of a shared history of service with the city and we look forward to being part of a shared future. We appreciate the city's willingness to include us in these important conversations about the future of downtown Santa Rosa, a future where you will need library services more than ever as you intensify zoning and create more housing. Libraries welcome everyone through our doors. We make communities smarter, safer, happier and more prosperous. And we look forward to a long partnership with you in downtown Santa Rosa as we imagine a new downtown Renaissance. Thank you. Nina Rizzo followed by Dwayne Dwayne. Well, you're really far away. Good afternoon, council members and commissioners. My name is Nina Rizzo and I'm the Green Trip Program Manager at Transform. So thank you, council member Tibbets for mentioning the alternatives to parking that our program offers. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, we are a nonprofit and we promote walkable communities with excellent transportation choices so that people of all incomes in California can be connected to opportunity. We can keep California affordable and help solve our climate crisis. So with diverse partners, we engage communities in planning, we run innovative programs and we win policy change at the local, regional and state level. So in 2008, Transform created the Green Trip Program to support and recognize multifamily housing that reduces parking, traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. And in your submittal that you received today, you should also have two letters that I submitted to Mr. Streeter. So back in 2007, Transform participated in the original drafting of the downtown station area plan and we support the city's redoubled efforts to promote transit-oriented development, especially in the aftermath of the 2017 Tubbs Fire. Infill housing is needed more now than ever. As was already mentioned, since 2007, the plan has only built 100 units and we're here today because we all know and agree that Santa Rosa can and must do better. We commend the city's proposal to facilitate shared parking resources and we also wanna push you a little bit more. To truly prioritize housing production and housing affordability, Transform recommends that the city eliminates parking minimums for the entire plan area, not just the quarter mile in the zone currently proposed. Parking requirements contribute to the high cost of development and encourage the use of vehicles to get around which results in more traffic and more greenhouse gas emissions. And as was noted before, we want to see a walkable community downtown in order to support the businesses that are there and the added ones that you want to come. So when parking costs are transferred to renters, rent becomes even less affordable by about 16%. And that's no chump change for someone who's a renter. That's about $140 additional per month. So we recommend that the city eliminate parking minimums for the entire plan area. And not only that, but we would recommend parking maximums of 1.0 ratio. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up and I just want to again, encourage you to be much more ambitious with the parking minimums and consider the inner related crises of housing and climate and to take bold action. Thank you. Dwayne DeWitt, followed by Cindy Young. Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I thank you for this effort, but it has been a bit exclusionary. It's important that we keep in mind the new state recommendations for general plans that will include environmental justice and social equity. And Roseland is one of the most disadvantaged places in the city, if not the county. The other day, actually on November 6th, Casey Edmondson, the current chair of your Cultural Heritage Board, pointed out that isolation of Roseland was from Santa Rosa's urban planning. So it's been something that's occurred because of the way planners act and not just because of the free market. I salute the free market and the opportunities that could be had to go for 10,000 more housing units. I'm a member of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group and I'm going for it. Sure, build as much as you can. Give all these developers every opportunity they can to get more housing in as close to the downtown central area. My point of contention today though is that I was a member of the Roseland-specific plan and in the past, I, as far back as the downtown task force of 1994, have been attending meetings, talking about how we're going to make things better for the city and Roseland. With that in mind, the Roberts Avenue connection is a vital thing, not just for the city, but for Roseland and it could be that thing that brought environmental justice and social equity to us. There was some consternation when at the end of the Roseland-specific plan process, we were told what we had talked about was being thrown aside because the city planners now wanted a tunnel under Highway 12. Now it appears that it's back in the mix and something different may come forward and you want to hang your hopes upon a bicycle and pedestrian connection. Well, I looked around when there was about 100 people in this room earlier, there was only one bicycle downstairs. People don't really use bicycles to get around Santa Rosa and you need to make sure that we don't do this plan hoping for something that's not going to occur. That connection is going to happen for you at least putting in a one-way road under that overpass that exists.  You don't have the money. You're not going to be able to do a two-lane road because it's too wide for there. But you could do a one-lane paved connector and you could have a walking and bicycling path next to it. It'd be much better than that smart boondoggle path they've put in. They've spent millions of dollars paving land next to the smart rail for people to use and very few bicyclists use it. So let's get real about this and put in a roadway and connect Roseland to downtown because I don't want to ride my bike in the rain. Thank you. Thank you, John. Cindy Young followed by Keith Woods. Good afternoon. I am a volunteer at the California Welcome Center at the Railroad Depot in Railroad Square and I came here because we see many, many travelers from around the world as well as many locals and many communers that use the smart train. The number one complaint is about the parking. Nevermind about the fees, but the limited parking that's available with only two or three hour time limit is not acceptable to most people that come in. And so I hope you're putting something into your plan that addresses the parking situation around the smart train. Hopefully there will be a parking lot there. Another complaint that I'm embarrassed to have to address is connecting to the rest of downtown which you are addressing thankfully. It's really embarrassing to tell people they have to walk through the mall or they have to go under the underpass where there are a lot of shelterless people living. We're grateful for the Redwood Gospel Mission and the St. Vincent's who house and feed the shelterless. Nevertheless, there are many of them that launder around and this creates quite a scene around the Railroad Square area. So some sort of resources and planning needs to be done for the homeless in the area to be addressed. Another issue is public restaurants. There are no public restaurants in the downtown area which I hope is being addressed. And then one other complaint we have is that there are no markets, no grocery stores, no markets to pick up a salad or a sandwich or a drink or an apple. So that is also something that's lacking in our downtown area and Railroad Square. And I do support the unification of Railroad Square making it into a square. I think that would be wonderful to have another little park there. However, we have the homeless issue to deal with first because that's not gonna make for a very pleasant environment there for square. So you're addressing a lot of these issues and I hope that you will continue to hold these into your plans, these ideas. Thank you. Thank you. Keith Woods followed by Peter Rumble. Mayor, council members, members of the commission. My name is Keith Woods. I work at the North Coast Builders Exchange but I'm here as a 32 year resident not representing the organization. And I've only got one response to what I've seen in this presentation and that is simply wow. The work that's been done on this is extraordinary. I've been in this town since 1987 seen a lot of plans brought forward but nothing as creative, visionary and appropriate for Santa Rosa as we're in the 21st century than what I've seen here. It's gonna create a new Santa Rosa and I think we need to look at it that way. At a meeting the other day, I referred to Santa Rosa as somewhat of a city teenager at that awkward stage between being a suburb of San Francisco, which we're not and while maintaining our agricultural roots and becoming a major city. And we're at that awkward stage and this will change all of that. I don't think people realize how big Santa Rosa is and is worthy of a program of a plan just like this. At around 175,000 people of Peter, I think we're the fifth largest city in the Bay Area out of nearly 100 communities. We're the largest I believe between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon and we deserve this. And I'm hoping it gets the broad support that it does deserve. Out of the 480 or so cities in give or take in California, this will move us up the list of great cities. I think other communities will look to us with envy if we can pull this off in the years ahead. I think the citizens and the businesses in Santa Rosa are ready for this. Now everyone will understand it's gonna be costly. It's a costly venture both for the private sector and the public sector. But I'm hoping that we carry the message all of us out to the citizens that this isn't just a cost, this is an investment. And we've got to look at it as an investment and what it can generate in tax dollars and identity building for tourism and it's making us further a destination will have payoffs to that investment. And I hope you take a very business-like approach in how you go about all of this. I'm in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with my friend, Mike Martini, which always feels a little uncomfortable, but he's right. We can't let this go on a shelf somewhere and not be carried out. This shouldn't be just a strategic or visionary plan. It's got to be a pure unadulterated action plan. I absolutely commend the staff from top to bottom for everything they've done to make this happen. And once again, I just say wow to all of this. And I hope you fast-track this to make this dream a reality because I'm getting old and well, I'm old, but I want to see this happen. So congratulations to all, move ahead on this. Thank you. Peter Rumble, followed by John Stewart. Mr. Mayor, Planning Commission, City Council. Peter Rumble from the Center of the Metro Chamber, not just the fifth largest city in the Bay Area, but the 26th largest city in California. So that's fun. I wanted to just raise a couple of points after I joined many others in commending staff in the city. I can't remember a time where staff were willing to drop everything and go out to a community meeting, make a presentation, collect input, like they were in this process. And it's to be commended with, I think, a day's notice. David Patrick, you guys showed up and it's really appreciated. I think that we want to make clear that this plan sort of holds sway with every other plan that is out there. We want to make sure that this is sort of the overriding plan. And I think that needs an affirmative statement. These are things that I'm hearing through the presentation. I just want to make sure that we are explicit about them. I think we also want to be sure that we meet the intent to continue to build up and not accidentally down zone. And this is a point that is a little bit more technical. It's just sort of an unintended consequence where we might find one little parcel down the road. So providing direction to staff to kind of follow the intent and the vision to build up and sort of de-conflict anything that comes up that might accidentally down zone rather than move up. I want to join with Transform and really commend this notion of eliminating parking requirements and allowing the market and the developer to find what works best for that development in that particular situation. So really want to commend that as well as want to make sure that we note that parking is not part of the FAR calculation. Again, we heard that in the presentation. I just want to be sure that your council provides affirmative direction in that. And then lastly to take care of some of the issues that were brought up through questions, I do want to be sure that your council knows and the planning commission knows that the chamber is very much ready to work on EIFDs as a way to enhance infrastructure financing districts to make sure that the city has the funding necessary to do the infrastructure improvements that we need to support this kind of a development. And of course the district's downtown district and the chamber stand ready to work on things like wayfinding and beautification and addressing some of the perception issues that we have for downtown. So thank you very much. Staff did just a tremendous job. Thank you. John Stewart, followed by Heath Troll. For me, this is a yogi bearer moment. I've been coming up here for 20 years. John Stewart, I'm the principal at a LLC called the Santa Rosa Canters. It's also been renamed the Fool's errand. And we're still at it. I'm a grandfather now many times over. I want to congratulate the staff on this work that they're doing. We're very enthusiastic about what you're doing. We've tracked this thing. I remember when we were coming up here in 07, there was no, let alone 99, there was no plan.  I congratulate you. I actually remember meeting staff people here when they were single, then they were engaged and they got married, they had babies and now the babies are in graduate school. So I am very happy to be back here. I set a summary of our interesting tragic comic scenario on this project, which started at 99. We spent three or four years from ought ought to ought for with the cultural heritage board. We're getting permission to deconstruct the various walls and keep certain walls. We cut a deal. There was another chair and in that, actually there were three chairs in that four, the city, the regional water quality control board and smart. We cut a deal where we preserved most, but not all of the walls that people saw in 08. We also then were able to access the soil to go down and do four years worth of work with the regional water quality control board, which is actually doesn't sound, it was a positive experience because they told us how high the bar was set. We now have no further action letters. We did soil remediation and groundwater both at 18 feet. We then got entitled in 08. We optioned the smart property, which is not one of my more brilliant moves, but we wanted to do the site in Toto at a time that seemed like a great idea. In theory, we should be able to do that site at Railroad Square in one fell swoop. The economy doesn't always listen to the planners in that regard, and you have to do what you can do. We were entitled in 09 for an affordable housing project, and the city decided that it wasn't what they wanted, they wanted to proceed with something that was all-encompassing involving both the smart property and ours, and they didn't like it as the senior site. So they rejected it, and we have been on the sidelines since 2013, so we're looking to wrap up your comments. Yeah. I want to compliment you on looking at the access to the creek. We designed our whole site so that it had a 47-foot swath leading to the creek. We did that from the beginning, working with the cultural heritage board. I like your concept about the FAR. John, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop. Sorry, our buzzer's not working, everyone's only entitled to three minutes, so thank you for your comments. Hugh Futrell, followed by Efren. Efren left, so Steve Bertelbaugh would be next. Oh, Efren is there, thank you. You moved. Okay, go ahead, Hugh. Yeah, Hugh Futrell, 204th Street. Mr. Mayor, members of the council and members of the commission, as most of you know, my firm has actually developed and built most of the new buildings of various kinds in downtown Santa Rosa over the last 25 years, so naturally, I have a particular perspective and looked at the preferred alternative with some care before coming forward to make a few comments. I also do wanna commend the planning department, Patrick Streeter and his team, for listening carefully to the comments that practitioners brought forth in this process. That willingness to listen is extremely important, and I will say to some degree was perhaps lacking 13 years ago with the prior plan. I have very quickly just a nature of a technical question that if it can be addressed at some point, I would appreciate it, and then three main observations. The technical question concerns the issue of road dieting and the preferred alternative along 3rd Street. There's a lot of language about that. I'm operating on the assumption, and I'm really, I guess, directing this to Patrick, that that is the kind of technical thing that will be drilled down on in the course of the next phases of the project, because there's a section of 3rd Street that may benefit from that, that is not explicitly called out for road dieting, although it is called out for landscape enhancements. So that's one question. Then very quickly, three observations. One is that the FAR concept, the numbers, the maximums, and the borders are absolutely right without any exception. The job on that is outstanding. Second, please stay away from being too prescriptive in the plan in respect to housing types, but the deepest respect those of us who are in the market as practitioners understand the market better than the city or a set of consultants ever could. Our problem is not a housing type problem, it's a different kind of problem. Third, the suggestion we heard from one commentator that there should be an absolute maximum of 1.0, please don't do that. There are occasions for family units, for example, in which tandem parking, which creates a 2.0 for that unit, is really necessary. The third issue and the one that I would really stress here is that the main contribution the city can make to transforming our downtown in the manner that Keith Woods mentioned, is in the area of infrastructure investment. A clever, flexible plan like this, one that's carefully thought through that lacks ambiguous and contradictory language, is essential. And the city staff deserves great credit for bringing this forward. But infrastructure is critical, that's the one thing you can do that the private sector cannot do. And in that respect, enhanced infrastructure financing districts are the absolute fundamental tool. So I encourage you, focus in on that, reference it where you can in the plan and make this an absolute top priority. Thank you. Thank you. Efren Carrillo, followed by Steve Bertelbaugh. Honorable members of the council, honorable members of the Planning Commission, Efren Carrillo, a lifelong resident of Santa Rosa. Staff has certainly put into practice the council's desire for community involvement and engagement, contrary to some of the comments here in public, from various notes of the city and really wanna commend Patrick, Claire and David for following through on their statements from the last joint session that we had here in January or earlier this year. A plan that supports a dense and livable pattern of development is where we are afforded the greatest opportunity to support a vibrant environment both day and night. Here to support the alternative preferred plan concept, which really brings in various components of what was discussed here prior joint study sessions, but also one that interconnects our streets, our parks, our public spaces, and our village centers. As we look at the actual development and putting the plan into action, I think it's important for us to continue to focus on a multimodal transportation system, as it already been described by some of the public comments earlier today, but one that does so in a way that provides a viable alternative to the car. I do think that there is a test case that we can promote here in the city of Santa Rosa that provides an alternative for folks that don't have a full reliance on the automobile. I think it's good for development. It's certainly good for quality of life and it's good for the environment. Reducing the requirements on parking and providing flexibility is key, as well as focusing on the height restrictions. I think while there is a necessity to be sensitive to particular zoning overlays, i.e. historic districts, some of the height restrictions in these areas may very well prove to be overly restrictive and in direct opposition to the fundamental goals of the plan. So as you move forward in acknowledging that construct, I do think that we're gonna have to look at a balancing act that are moving forward. I personally believe that less restriction here is better. As we look towards housing, and the housing mix in the core and in the village centers, I think it's gonna be important to ensure there's a wide range of housing choices for individuals and families with a diverse set of social and economic backgrounds. That will be critical. The plan before you is not only a step in the right direction, but rather a leap towards the city reaching its full potential. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Steve Bertelbaugh, followed by Lois Fisher. Steve Bertelbaugh with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. I want to be the third person to confirm the idea that parking should not be regulated. Let the builder and the financing agencies, the banks, decide how many parking places a particular development needs to have. They know much more about what's needed than any of us do. And they tend to lean in the direction of too much parking, but let them make the decision. Don't establish parking minimums. So that should be for the entire district. What we are finding is that with e-bikes, electric bikes, and electric scooters, the catchment area for the station has expanded. It's no longer the half mile that people have been considering is the distance that people are willing to walk to the train. The train is carrying lots of bicycles. The idea of running bikes and being able to drive to the station and leave them at the station is picking up steam. And so the entire area should be looked at as a catchment area for the travel on smart. So that brings us to the idea that we need to make the streets safe for people to walk and for people to bike. Let's include in this plan the idea that we have limited speeds downtown and good places for people to use their bikes and their electric scooters. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Lois Fisher, followed by Cliff Wiggum. Good afternoon, Council on Planning and Commission. My name is Lois Fisher. And I actually need to have the preferred plan concept FAR brought up, if possible. I actually wanted to thank Council Member Rogers for asking about the Square and Railroad Square, which I'm here to promote. And one thing I really would like to have the plan do as Council Member Rogers mentioned, is it in the plan? And I think part of the reason that it's hard to see is Courthouse Square is right here and it's actually green. And I guess the vision is that this is the potential square right here and it should probably be green in this FAR plan. Now I think it has FAR 5, which is really not really practical considering it's a park and then there's a historic depot in that site. So I'd like to have it match the Courthouse Square coloring on that one. And then the next item is the preferred plan concept design considerations. I guess the next slide. I didn't catch that one slide. The next slide is it has design considerations. Yeah, oops, you just passed it. Okay, you can see again here the Courthouse Square is green and Railroad Square is actually, it shows that it has a preservation district on it. And I can understand that for the depot itself, the depot building itself, but I definitely don't want to preserve that parking lot into perpetuity. So I'd like to have the preservation district, maybe even a little asterisk in denoting the depot itself, but not spilling over onto the rest of the plan. And then I think someone mentioned that the idea of a greenscape would encourage the homeless population in that area. And we actually have two alternatives for the Courthouse Railroad Square. One is a hardscape piazza and the other's more of a green space. And almost everybody has been saying they prefer the hardscape for that very reason. So anyway, we're doing everything we can to address that in our design. So thank you. Thank you. Cliff Wiggum followed by Rick Tice. Well, regarding the connectivity between North and South Roberts Avenue, the underpass for the Rudotta Trail makes total sense. It needs to be upgraded with lights and widened, but we'll never get cars down that. Dutton Avenue and all of our pretty full now. When we build housing to the South, we're going to need a way to get across. The Roberts Avenue underpass makes sense, but I understand there's no money to do it, but they can do it. Future infrastructure tax financing has a possibility. If we straighten out Roberts Avenue, so it goes straight to Sebastopol Road and connects to Timothy, Timothy could be made to go straight to Barham and you can get to 101. So you'd have a straight shot from Third Street under 12 to Sebastopol Road, four-way intersection at Timothy and continue to Barham. If we encourage the developer to straighten the crooked Roberts Avenue to make it straight to go to Timothy and their initial development, we can plan for the underpass in the future when we can be afforded and when the traffic dictates that it would work. I've talked to developers and they're in favor of doing such, but we'll need a lot of support from government and from Caltrans will have to get on board to do an underpass. The city's engineering and traffic studies have said the only place you can put an over or an underpass between 101 and Stoney Point is Roberts Avenue. So I'm encouraging that we don't shell the underpass, but we prepare for that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Rick Tice followed by Richard Carlisle. What a great pleasure it is to be here. I was a former Santa Rosa Planning Commissioner and I want to say that an advocate for smart growth and sustainable development for 35 years here in Sonoma County. It was sort of disappointing. The other thing I want to do is I want to thank all the three staff people sitting in front of you from community development as well as Mr. Rose up here who helped Sonoma Academy build one of the most sustainable buildings in America and in 2018 won virtually every award for sustainable design and performance. And I oversaw the development of that project and they were a great pleasure to work with. I do want to say it was a real disappointment to hear Patrick Streeter say that, you know, we still have no sense of place here in Santa Rosa. And 20 years ago, the American Institute of Architects, Rudas Study came here and told us the same thing. There is no sense of place in Santa Rosa. This could be a city in Iowa. How disappointing. Well, this plan could be transformational. And I can't believe that Keith Woods and I are standing side by side in total agreement. Unbelievable. Anyway, and when I took the first walking tour with Patrick Streeter, a couple of people said, but where are the people going to park? And I know you're gonna be faced with that problem. And just I saw an interesting article the other day about when they built Giant Stadium, the business community was adamant that we needed 100,000 new parking places or it would create a ghost town in San Francisco, economic ruin. And Ellen Jacobs, who was the professor and chair of UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning as the guru on parking, said, in parking as with the rest of life, the best path is sophisticated, yet simple. San Francisco should do nothing. In fact, so that's what happened. And without 10,000 new parking places, well, it's not a ghost town and in fact has become quite the contrary and investment unfortunately has brought this place with this extremely huge success. The other thing I want to point out is affordability of housing. If we want smart to be successful, we need to have an abundance of affordable housing and a minimum of market rate housing around Railroad Square. And I'll send you copies to the Dukaka Center report on affordability for transit rich neighborhoods, which really explains why that needs to happen Thank you very much and good luck. Thank you, Richard Carlisle followed by Peter Stanley. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the council and planning commission. I'm Richard Carlisle, also a former planning commissioner who was involved in the original station area plan. And I want to commend staff for really taking the original plan and putting some oomph into it. I think it's a very good addition and changes to the plan to give it some meat to it. Anyway, job well done. And a couple of comments I want to make in going through some of the public hearings with staff and in the past here, I noticed that the east side, which is between East Street and Brookwood, it seems to me like that's a good opportunity area. You have Memorial Hospital on the east doing a vast expansion. So you have an employment base there. You have a small shopping center right there. You have a police station. You have a fire station. You have Santa Rosa Creek that connects it back into downtown. That could be a pedestrian way. So it has a lot of opportunity for some immediate housing right adjacent to the downtown. So I think that should be looked into. Secondly, I want to support what Lois Fisher said as a longtime owner, property owner in Railroad Square. I think having the square redone in Railroad Square is fantastic. You have the historic stone buildings there where we could create a piazza. And I can't tell you how many times I've stood there and kind of observed people coming off of the train, newcomers to Santa Rosa.  So what do they do? They kind of walk down the middle of 4th Street because there's no there or there. And so we really would appreciate emphasizing that square redone there for an entrance into Santa Rosa as coming off the train. And as you know, the merchants and property owners back that they approved the new financial package just recently to help support that. So I want to emphasize hopefully we can get that square. It took a long time to get Courthouse Square. So maybe we can get this one a little faster. Thank you. Thank you. Peter Stanley. Am I on? Mayor Schwedhelm, Chair Sisco and members of the commission and council. My name is Peter Stanley. I'm with Archeologics and also a downtown business owner. I want to add my congratulations to staff for this incredible work that they have done. This has been a vast improvement over where we started from 2007. We are definitely headed in the right direction. I've submitted a letter to council and to the commission with a couple dozen endorsements from downtown business owners, stakeholders and individuals within the community in support of this plan, but also with just some comments. As we all well know, the devil is in the details. Patrick has made it clear that that's where we're headed now is to work through these details. First and foremost, I want to support this significant change from CD districts and height caps into FAR. I think this is a creative approach. This is a way for us to get the density that we want. It leaves that in the hands of the developer and the market to figure out how to make it work. The reduction in the parking requirements is a significant addition as well. It's time to start letting the development community work through all of these problems. As we know, it's not just one thing. It is an avalanche of issues that we have to address in the city. One cautionary note I want to make is that we have these edge conditions in this community in the downtown planning area. We have areas that are ripe for development, either vacant lots or underutilized lots that do not have historic buildings on them, but they may fall in or on the edge of historic districts. And there is subjective language within this policy and it's not being addressed right now. I know it's on everybody's mind, but this notion of compatibility becomes a very difficult thing to overcome at times because that's a very subjective approach. If a piece of dirt has been sitting there for 40 years, what's its compatibility to the existing neighborhood now and what development could we put on those sites? And I'm speaking of the smart site at this point, but there are other edge condition sites. We have an FAR on that site now, which is encouraging good dense development, but it's surrounded by one and two-story buildings. So is the compatibility gonna become an issue as we move down the road? I just think subjective language has a way of causing problems down the road, not by anybody's, it's not by plan, but it just comes out as we try to move through with projects that are on the ground. So flexibility in the approach, giving that flexibility of planning staff, community benefits that allow us to enhance and move and bring in new ideas. Patrick's made it clear, staff has made it clear, we do not have all the answers right now and we don't know where the answers are going to be, but we are all working towards that. A lot of us have been here for a long time, 40 years I've been here trying to expand on this. I just wanna quickly say also that I sat on the commission with Commissioner Sisko and that Roberts Road Connection is a critical piece of the circulation between Roseland and into that downtown plan. I think this is something that we talked about a lot and it was put in there for a reason. I would encourage you to keep looking at that. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all the cards we have. If I can just solicit both of the bodies. Are there any questions from any of the comments that you'd like to ask staff before we go to the five questions? Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. The question I did have for you guys is relating to how historical buildings and districts come to be formed and to Mr. Stanley's point, how do we take the subjectivity out of it and turn it into an objective process? Yeah, so we do have the Cultural Heritage Board as a body created by the council and appointed by the council and one of their tasks in addition to design or develop development review is also to establish our preservation districts and we do have a council adopted document for the processing procedures for historic properties. So it does come from the council giving direction on how our historic districts are regulated but also what the structure is for that. And as I mentioned previously, we do have a section in the zoning code that's applicable to areas that are in our historic preservation di