Priorities

• Protect and strengthen retail and services
• Maintain adequate LOS (Level of Service) on Page Mill/El Camino intersection

One area or two?

• Stretch from Sherman to Olive (0.55 miles) is not pedestrian-friendly, and unlikely to be changed in near- or intermediate-term
  • CalAve Parking Lot, Courthouse Parking, Apts, Overpass, Office Building (former Agilent)
  • Condos and commercial buildings with no street presence, vacant lot, overpass, vacant lot (possible public safety building, planned R&D/apartments, auto dealer
• Park/Page Mill intersection:
  • SW side is already bike- and pedestrian-unfriendly: traffic
    Not just volume, but behavior of drivers
  • Additional traffic from former Agilent building
  • Traffic from 195 Page Mill will degrade NE side
  • Traffic from whatever is added from this plan
  • At PM peak, ramp to NE-bound Oregon backs up onto Park, routinely to Sheridan, occasionally to Grant
• Tentative conclusion: two separate areas that can have some mutual support.
  Designate as: CalAve and Cal-Ventura

Intersection of Page Mill/El Camino

• Cut-through traffic critical to functioning of intersection: Pepper and Olive to Ash for right turns onto NE-bound Page Mill from NW-bound El Camino
• LOS of D as of October 2008, but local planners have said it feels more like an E
• Pending developments in SRP (Stanford Research Park) that will likely add traffic

CalAve

• Plan to make more pedestrian-friendly
  • Wider sidewalks
  • Two lane street: easily to cross, less of psychological barrier
  • Because of funding cutbacks, these improvements are currently not scheduled
• Research Park provides large customer basis (felt in downturns)
  • Trip reduction
  • Sales tax generator
• Lunch is critical to restaurants
  • Tables on (widened) sidewalks
  • Sun: street runs NE to SW (50 degree)
• Needs a better mix of retail
  • Too many restaurants?
    • Yes: need more space for other types of stores
    • No: foot traffic generators for other retail
  • Too many beauty/nail saloons
  • How to manage?
• What nearby residents like: "neighborhood feel", not a regional destination (like University Avenue)
  Redevelopment should retain character ("respect older buildings")
• Parking quantity: serious shortage
  • Permits: long waiting list (currently about 6 months) (reportedly a judge is parking in residential area)
  • Complaints that inadequate parking for employees is driving businesses out of district (to MV)
  • Little margin for error: Routine construction (current utility work on Cambridge) can make parking hard to find
  • Reduction of available parking: not just loss of business, but loss of businesses
  • Parking lots were paid for by business, but planners and developers tend to view them as available for "intensified use"
• Parking location+type critical to retail: surface and close to stores
• Sections of area feel inhospitable to many
  • Area around fountain: on way to pedestrian/bike tunnel and train station
  • ...
• Impression: shade trees not being replaced
• Constraints:
  • Parking: amount, type, location
    • New development MUST provide realistic parking, (underparking new development is PA's current standard practice)
  • Providing open, warm (daylight) areas along CalAve
    • Height restrictions?

Cal-Ventura

• History (inconsistent goals and promises):
  • Comp Plan #1 (circa 1980?) This area was designated for relocating businesses (especially auto sales & service) being displaced by zoning changes on El Camino. According to what I have been told (but haven't confirmed), these zoning changes were a result of the previous Comprehensive Plan (1980-1995)
  • Already been reduced (Lambert Ave conversions)
  • "Promise" to residents of Pepper&Olive pocket that there would be conversion of nearby areas to residential
• Important generator of sales tax revenue: Fry's and auto dealers
• Trip reduction: shopping for large customer base in SRP and SU and ...
• Trip reduction for residents: many people in southern Palo Alto state that they do most of their shopping in Mountain View. Observation by several: see neighbors more in MV than PA.
• The City has so whittled down commercial space that there is nowhere left for these types of businesses
• Limited traffic outlets
  • Train tracks
  • Ventura neighborhood: narrow streets, heavily parked
  • El Camino: one traffic light, additions unlike (Caltrans/El Camino Redesign)
  • Page Mill/Oregon: County is pushing to increase capacity by reducing crossings
    PTOD plan of 2006 has a pedestrian/bike crossing of Page Mill at Ash.
    Without a traffic light, it would be deadly. With one, it would create devastating congestion at Page Mill/El Camino.
• Inadequate park land: John Boulware Park (at Ash, between Chestnut and Fernando): 1.5 acres
• Fry's site zoned for housing. Retail given extensions because of toxics in groundwater

Transit Use?

• Useability dependent on both ends (housing and job) of trip
  • 60% of outbound trips to SF and SJ
  • SamTrans (Caltrain operator) presentation:
    • ridership skewed to higher incomes
    • 3% yield (households with a Caltrain commuter)
  • Empirical: parking lot sparse. On 25 Feb 2009 at 1:55pm, of the 169 numbered spaces, only 54 were occupied (32%)
• Disincentives
  • No walkable schools because of distance and traffic dangers.
    Measuring from Danger Research (3101 Park)
    • Barron Park Elementary: 1.2 miles; El Carmelo: 1.4 miles; Escondido: 1.75 miles
    • Terman: 1.9 miles
    • Paly: 2.0 miles; GunnHS 2.2 miles
    • If parents drive children to school, unlikely to return through congestion to park car at home and take transit
  • Limited bus usability
    • Current usage appears limited
    • VTA has declared BART-to-SJ to be priority for funding
    • Periphery of system (eg PA) naturally going to have poorer service

Inconsistent Aspirations

• Conflicting roles for housing-above
  • Support for retail (restaurants and small stores): disposable income, leisure time
  • Affordable housing: scrimping, Costco/WalMart shoppers
• Demographics of residents of housing-above
  • Desire: Select area for
    • "cafe society"
    • Mass transit (train) to jobs
    • Few children
  • Experience: children into PA schools
• Interaction between Mixed-Use and Transit-Oriented:
  • Mixed-use assumption: substantially reduced parking requirements because residents' cars are gone during day when needs for the commercial uses is the highest.
  • Transit-oriented assumption: residents leave their cars at home during the day. Assumption that people in Palo Alto's transit-oriented areas will have noticeably few cars is not supported by experience.
• Mixed-use subcategories: Many of the potential benefits of mixed-use are more easily realized for office uses (eg, complementary parking patterns, noise) than for retail. However, the drive for mixed-use is because Palo Alto has too little retail and is categorized as having too much office space (jobs-housing imbalance).
• Hope is not a strategy

Mixed-use more difficult than typically presented

• Recent comments by major landlord at San Antonio Shopping Center: "Dense homes at San Antonio called 'pipe dream' With 16 shopping center owners and Walmart in the mix, a Santana Row-like development is not possible, Thoits says" PaloAltoOnline News, 13 Feb 2009 (http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=11223)
• Parking conflicts: retail needs close surface spaces, but residents tend to use
• Noise: Issue of expectations: California Ave merchants have had problems with noise complaints from nearby residential: garbage pickup, sidewalk cleaning, ...
• Constraints of residents-above can narrow pool of potential tenants
• Safety: inevitable restaurant fires

Need fact-based assessment of tradeoffs

• Fact-based, 360-degree assessments. Examples of "360":
  • Argument that putting housing above retail would provide additional customers, but fails to balance that against loss of customers resulting from loss of parking spaces to those residents and their guests.
  • If replacing Fry's with housing, count the effects of people having to drive much further.
• Conversion of commercial (esp retail) to housing shifts the balance between sales tax and property tax.
  • Shift to property tax benefits the school district
  • Shift away from sales tax hurts City finances
• The "Live-Work" theory: evidence is that doesn't hold in Palo Alto
  • Theory is that people will choose to live near work if possible. Having supply of rentals allows people to move as jobs move.
  • Harkens back to days of one breadwinner per family. If couple both work, their jobs can be tens of miles apart
  • Jobs move, but Prop 13 and sales commissions lock people into their houses
  • Over 50% of housing units in Palo Alto are rentals, but only 20-30% of employed Palo Altans work in Palo Alto

Political Constraints/Lack of Credibility

The City has lost credibility with a significant portion of population because of a history of failures (history = systemic problems, not failures of individuals).

• Unfair process: City has a history of taking input only from housing advocates in making decisions about replacing commercial with high-density housing (current round looks to be an exception). People with other concerns were
  • Not informed of initial meetings, then told their input was too late
  • Disparaged at the meetings they attended, for example as being "selfish"
  • misrepresented or excluded entirely from Staff reports summarizing those meetings
• Retail viability needs proactive support/management that the City has historically refused to provide
  • Source of strength of malls
  • For University Avenue, provided by the 5 major developers/landlords
  • Council makes transient, weak moves: heart in right place, but unwilling to commit
    • Funded a staff position, but allowed City Manager to leave it unfilled (position in addition to EconDev=Susan Barnes (formerly Arpan))
    • Has routinely approved conversion of retail to housing
      • both in Comp Plans (#1 and #2) and in individual projects
      • reducing critical mass, contiguous-ness, walkability
• Mixed Use: has been badly abused. Examples:
  • Alma Plaza: Designated Neighborhood retail center in CompPlan.
    • Allowed some mixed-use so that housing could subsidize retail
    • Turned into 80% market-rate residential + 20% mixed use (retail with BMR above)
    • Among arguments by developer: division needed for financing and operational management
  • Hyatt Rickey's (withdrawn incomplete plan): Hotel with no conference facilities + residential qualified
• Trip generation underestimated. Commonly done for high-density housing by underestimating number of children and/or unsupported claims of high transit use. Recent example:
  • Hyatt Rickey's/Arbor Real
  • 195 Page Mill (circa 2004) Approved by City but overturned by court:
    • 177 apartments (304 bedrooms) + 100-200 employees (based on sqft-age of R&D space
    • 422 parking spaces, after 104 parking space reduction for mixed-use (the churn)
    • Claimed peak trip generation: 87 AM; 114 PM. Credible?
• Parking: underestimated. Recent examples:
  • Alma Plaza: project outline approved despite developer admitting to Council that the planned parking was not adequate to some prospective retail and Community Room. Council response was not to require more parking but simply declare (without evidence) that the shortage would occur only in a smaller time frame. In really the Council shifted costs - providing adequate parking -from the developer onto the tenants (businesses) and the community in the form of lost business (lost opportunties for both the businesses and residents) and wasted time resulting from inadequate parking. This sort of cost shifting (in favor of developers) is routine.
  • Arbor Real: persistent overflow parking on neighborhood streets, despite residents having predicted such.
  • Various other condo/townhouse complexes pre-2000