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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1021 8:30 a.m. MINUTES ADJOURNED MEETING PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION 8:30 A.M. -TUESDAY - OCTOBER 21, 2003 I. CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Campbell called the meeting to order at 8:33 a.m. 11. ROLL CALL Members Present: Sonia Campbell, Chairperson Sabby Jonathan, Vice Chairperson Cindy Finerty Jim Lopez Dave Tschopp Me;nbers Absent: None Staff Present: Phil Drell, Director of Community Development Steve Smith, Planning Manager Mark Greenwood, City Engineer Mark Diercks, Transportation Engineer Phil Joy, Associate Transportation Engineer Tonya Monroe, Administrative Secretary 111. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS None IV. PUBLIC HEARING A. Case No. GPA 01-04, CITY OF PALM DESERT, Applicant (Continued from October 7, 2003 and September 16, 2003) The following is a verbatim transcript of this Public Hearing: Key SC Sonia Campbell, Planning Commission Chairperson 1 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD Phil Drell, Director of Community Development Si Sabby Jonathan, Planning Commissioner JL Jim Lopez, Planning Commissioner DT Dave Tschopp, Planning Commissioner DM Donna Matson LR Lucy Rodriguez BP Bertha Perez TP Tim Palmer MC Michael Castelli LW Locksi Witte MG Mark Greenwood, City Engineer CF Cindy Finerty, Planning Commissioner MH Margaret Hartsworn CM Chris McFadden ?? Unclear who was speaking SC We have Case No. GPA 01-04, City of Palm Desert, Applicant, and this public hearing is being continued from October 71" and September 16"'. Request for consideration of a Comprehensive General Plan Update. The Public Hearing is open, so Mr. Drell... Vail PD Good morning. We are continuing discussion of the land use element and the focus areas. I would like to start at this time with the north Highway 111 alley issue. To review, this area north Highway 111, originally the Palma Village Plan designated all the lots that you see on the north side of this alley as developable into a Presidents' Plaza type common parking area to encourage redevelopment of the north Highway 111 commercial lots. For various reasons over the years, this was really never implemented. The Redevelopment picked up one lot. We have a couple of committed lots via some redevelopments that did occur to the Andreino's Restaurant and to Mark's Golf, but in general, the alley looks pretty much the way today as it did 15 years ago. We had proposed last meeting an alternative plan which would extend 46 feet north of the alley, creating a double row of parking, creating I believe 264 parking spaces. The problem is, it would eliminate a couple of houses, actually three houses, one tri-plex and one house which is being used as a business on San Marcos. Based on testimony at the last meeting, we produced another alternative which instead of a double row in the middle of diagonal spaces, we'd have one row of 90 degree spaces on the north side and a six-foot landscape planner and a wall adjacent to the residential allowing for trees. This could save all of the existing houses with wo 2 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 the exception of the two on San Marcos, the tri-plex and the house that is being used as a window tinting business. It produced 188 spaces. If we probably put in some intermediate landscape planters so you wouldn't have just a continuous asphalt drive it might come down to 170 spaces. At four spaces per thousand, it could generate about 40-50,000 square feet of expanded development on the area as opposed to 60,000 or 70,000 square feet for the alternative with more parking. Obviously, the cost of acquisition...probably one of the obstacles in the implementation of this plan was not wanting to face the cost, and so coming up with an alternative that preserves to the greatest extent the existing residential uses and preserves most of the back yards might be a simple alternative that actually can be implemented. You have in your packet a letter from a property owner advocating...it was just distributed to you this morning...this lesser alternative with just...again, it would take 26 feet of the back yard. So, open up the floor to either discussion from the audience or... Si Brief question before we do that. PD Sure. Si Alternative A would create, you said, 244? SC 264. PD 264. Si And how many homes would be impacted? PD Three homes would be impacted, a tri-plex on the west side of San Marcos, which in some people's opinion should be impacted, and then there is a house on the east side of San Marcos which is used as a business. Si So four homes plus a tri-plex? PD Correct. SJ Would there also be back yard acquisitions? PD Yes. There would have to be 26...there would be 46 feet of back yard �.. acquisition. It would also eliminate those garages, certain lots have those 3 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 garages that back onto the alley. Right here and here. In this plan, they'd still probably be eliminated. The houses that would be eliminated would be here, here's the tri-plex, here is the house that is a business, and then two houses over here off of San Benito. The garages, these two garages, this house also has somewhat of a garage that would be impacted. The other thing that would be impacted in any plan is...over on Las Palmas there is an apartment project with a whole line of carports, and actually that is a area which we did do some implementation, that we did acquire this parcel. Here are the carports...we did acquire this parcel here, which the carports could be relocated to, and the City actually owns the parcel next to it. In the straight in parking plan, you see that these two houses are still preserved, obviously with a significantly shorter back yard. This house here on the end, right next to the Walgreen's parking lot, the wall would almost go right up to the back of the house, so the back yard's entirely eliminated...that one still might have to be sacrificed and be acquired if we are going to build the parking adjacent to it. Again, theoretically, we can do a little jogging there at the corner since we do have some room since it's a vacant lot on the other side. t Si So the idea is that the City would acquire that property on a voluntary basis if possible and then incur the costs of creating the parking, or are we talking about... PD Again, that would be a discussion...in the Palma Village Plan, the suggested implementation would be that the Parking Authority would acquire the properties, build the parking lot...we've already received easements from a few of the commercial property owners as part of their developments. An assessment district would be created to maintain it, like exists in Presidents' Plaza, and then as individual redevelopment projects or private redevelopment projects expanded their buildings, they would be assessed a per parking space fee for the additional parking that their expansions generated. So there would be somewhat of a pay as you go and some reimbursement to the Authority. For those businesses that took advantage of the extra parking, they would contribute and reimburse the Parking Authority. Si But the additional parking is not just to enable expansion, it's also to alleviate the parking deficiency that exists, right? ff9 f 4 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD The reason why there's a parking deficiency is the alley is so undesirable, that really no one wants to park in it. Most everyone parks out on the frontage road right now. The frontage road capacity is probably maxed out. If in fact all the employees park back behind the buildings, probably right now we would be okay. The primary goal of the investment is to encourage remodeling and expansion and redevelopment of those old buildings. Si How much room is there for expansion? I mean remodeling, yes, but actual expansion... PD Most of the...if you look at the stores here...for instance, the old—you're looking at 20, 25% coverage of the Highway 111 lots, and you notice that the lots are substantially vacant, you see a lot of cars on the frontage road. So the goal would be...you have some that are...some lots that are...the other problem a lot of the lots, they are only 50 feet wide, which is a lousy geometry for developing parking. It's much wider than you need for one row of parking but not enough for two, so it makes a lot more sense for those lots to be built out. In essence, what we're trying to do is taking real estate that is on Highway 111 that is probably worth $20 a square foot and create parking on real estate that is far less expensive. Let's look at a lot of those back yards...first, about half of those residential lots are currently vacant and a lot of the back yards that are there are not particularly well maintained either because of the indefinite boundary that we have there with the commercial zone. Hopefully as part of this, you create a nice row of trees which the back of this thing then would create a somewhat more compatible defensible boundary there between the commercial and residential uses. JL For the sake of the conversation this morning, obviously one of the options is to do nothing. PD Correct. JL But let's say for this morning we say we put in Plan B. We do anything else to that alley, or do we just add parking places, and everything that's on the side of the buildings just remains the same. Is there any thought about going back because right now the place looks pretty bad. The alley is undesirable, as you say, and if we did nothing, or if we did put parking, what will we do, or what should we do regarding the parking or the situations behind all of those buildings along that entire alley, because it is a very undesirable place. tow MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 1 don't even know that if we put parking back there and it remains exactly the way it is today, that anybody will use the parking back there. PD You would have to be...coupled with...we have a facade improvement program because the other thing we have to do is we have to make the backs of the buildings also desirable. We have had, and we heard from some of them last meeting, three or four property owners who have been waiting for 20 years for this to happen, to justify the expansion and remodeling of the buildings. It might take a long time, obviously, depending on how aggressive we want to get with our facade program. If you are familiar, in our facade improvement program, we will pay for 50% of facade changes up to...again, a $70,000 job we would pay $35,000. Whether we want to up that to encourage not just facade changes but remodeling and to make sure that those facade changes occur on the backs of the buildings as well as on the front, that would be another incentive. There are two ways to do redevelopment. One is with a bulldozer, which one of our neighbor cities has tried. The other is, for example, what is slowly happening on Fred Waring or what happened on Monterey. All we did on Fred Waring and , Monterey is change the land use. It has taken some time, but Monterey between 111 and the College and beyond the College actually up to Park View, now looks pretty good, and all we did was we had vacant properties or old run-down houses, and all we did was change the zoning. In 20 years, it has slowly changed. You are seeing the same thing happening on Fred Waring. Given the value and desirability of those properties on Highway 111, the market will tend to try to maximize that value, and the buildings that are there now don't do that. Eventually, you will have property owners who will say gee whiz, this is a great location to have a business, but this is a 2,000 square foot building that has eight-foot ceilings, it's got a swamp cooler, it's got lousy electrical, probably needs to be torn down, but right now it can only be replaced with a 2,000 square foot building. Typically, people don't like to tear down buildings for which they are receiving rent, no matter how ugly they are, because they can only replace them with the same square footage. So being able to provide at least some opportunity for expansion, which means more rents for more rentable area or leasable area...the other thing, we have some existing businesses that are very successful. Generally, we have a whole bunch of successful businesses in that stretch. A number of them have outgrown their buildings, and they are faced with either moving or expanding. Without more parking, they can't expand. It's a lot more dramatic and obvious change when we just use a bulldozer. We have chosen to try to work with the existing businesses and 6 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 existing property owners...and right, it's going to take longer, but I think it will eventually happen because they are sitting on very, very, very valuable commercial real estate which is being underutilized by the current buildings. Sc Mr. Drell, let's talk about 20 years from now, 25 years from now...do you think that Plan B with 188 spaces would be enough? PD Okay, this is what I meant to say at the beginning. When you are doing this sort of redevelopment, there's going to be no perfect solution, especially when you're balancing objectives at the boundary of the residential and commercial area. It will provide...obviously the more we have the better. More parking allows...a little bit of incentive is good, a lot more incentive is more, is better. It goes back to the practicality of how much this costs to implement this and what is the cost on the residential side. It becomes a tough call, but acknowledging that there will be no perfect solution, it compromises what you're going to end up with. Si I want to ask you something, Mr. Drell. I'm not sure...I'm not trying to make a point as much as I really need this question in my mind answered. I +r.. remember many of these businesses coming through the approval process, through us, and trying to persuade us, and many cases successfully, that they have adequate parking. In many cases, they sought exceptions to our ordinance and received that exception. Why would we then come back and build additional parking for them now that they realize that they made a mistake? PD Okay, those businesses that came through, we got something from them. Andreino's we got a lot. I mean, a parcel. Basically, this parcel right here as part of his approval he...okay, right here, as a condition of approval...he got approval on the basis that he would temporarily contract with the bank and the veterinary clinic for parking. But what we got from him was a parking easement on this parcel and a condition that if we ever do this, he would contribute per the amount of parking he needed. Same thing with Mark's Golf, as you recall. Si But you said we're not going to ask them to contribute toward the construction of the parking. Only if someone comes in for an expansion. PD He was conditioned with his approval to, if and when it ever...he did provide the real estate. `. 7 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 SJ You know, Andreino's is a good example because I remember them coming to us and persuading us that yeah, they're going to have parking at the bank and no, it's not too far for their customers, and yada yada, and then they were here at our last meeting saying oh, it's a terrible situation, we have to walk all the way across to the bank for our parking, so I mean... PD No, remember, the presumption of their approval was that someday we would implement this program, and remember the motivation was...the goal of the program was to get good businesses to do the things you need to be successful, so that was the goal, that's the end goal. And those approvals were predicated on us someday implementing this adopted program that's in the General Plan today. And instead of telling them, sorry don't do that, go somewhere else, abandon your building, build a restaurant in Rancho Mirage, we said...again, there's no perfect solution. We weighed the cost of discouraging a very successful business. And by the way, that's the one business who...a lot of our businesses have been hurt by The River...for whatever reason, his business had it's best year ever in the last year. It tells you something about what we achievea by making that choice. We said in , the interim we will have this fixed, which is not perfect, that allows you to do business. You will (inaudible) contribute a piece of real estate to the ultimate goal, which allows...we don't have to buy his property, we don't have to acquire anything for that lot, he's given it to us already. And add that he will make a contribution when the thing's built, but that's the same thing we did with Presidents' Plaza, and remember in 1980 when we built Presidents' Plaza, it was a similar situation. When it opened, yeah maybe less than half of it was full of cars in 1980, but it allowed businesses to expand and to do better, and now it's jammed full. So it took time, and we've had to redo it once to even get more parking in there. One, we're not doing it for the existing businesses, we're doing it to hope to attract new businesses to encourage the owners to invest money in their properties. Same thing with the problem with Radio Active there at the corner, a situation, again, where a guy has a great tenant, it is creating them a lot of rent, the building looks awful, but he's not going to get a nickel more if he gets a nicer building. He's got the same lease. So it's partly a psychology game. The (inaudible)we've approved, we've approved...same with Mark's Golf, we've got an easement for the lots behind him, we don't have to acquire that lot. Sometimes that's what cities do. SC Any other questions of Mr. Drell? 8 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 %wr DT I've got three or four for you. PD Sure. DT What has driven the number of parking spaces needed? Has there been a study conducted that shows we need 264 or 188 or is it just what would work? PD We're looking at what produces some parking. The original goal, again...the Palma Village Plan initially wiped out all these houses entirely, and you have a wall like you see in the back of Walgreen's. The perception by a property owner who lived right here, in my own conversion, and something actually I knew all along but was in my mind was emphasizing the needs of the commercial over the residential to a certain degree, the first motivation to change was the quality of life and the quality of a residential experience in these circles would degrade significantly even if you had landscaping and a wall and a back end of a parking lot. What makes the best neighborhood is houses on both sides, houses and front yards. tow DT So we don't have any real... PD No, in terms of we want to produce more parking, let's produce as much parking as we can in a fixed piece of geometry that's shared by two uses and come up with a line that still preserves sufficient residential real estate to still have houses. That's what you see here is how to plot vacant lots and originally on the 46 plan, which took out a bunch of houses and shortened the back yards, that theoretically you could still plot houses on those lots, you might have to adjust our front yard setbacks a bit, but it's just a matter of balancing the geometric requirements of residences with trying to work in the geometry of parking, which is created in either 24- or 25-foot increments. DT On Plan A, it was 46-foot encroachment into some of the houses to the north. PD Right. DT On Plan B, how much would that go into, on average? PD Plan A would be 45, Plan B is 26. 9 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 i i DT 26 feet. PD 26 feet. DT Have you met with or had any kind of community meetings over there, met with homeowners individually or as a group and with some of the businesses to see what might work and what might be a consensus that they would have on approving this... PD I've met with them individually, I've never met with them all together other than them coming together at these meetings. DT And then I guess the other question would be, I've always understood that's not really an alley, that there actually is a street, a portion, maybe it's the westerly portion that is a street, but needless to say, it's not a very safe driving area back there and it's a heavily used alley/street. If you implemented this, would the alley be improved, would the poles come down? PD Yes, it would be made, redone, it would be a regular width drive aisle. Again, on this plan, we would put...that's the reason we would have less than 188, r we would probably put, typically we do intermediate fingers into the parking lot so you don't see 45 feet of just asphalt, there'd be trees sticking out into it. It would look as attractive as any alley that meets our standards, of any parking lot that meets our standards. DT You may have answered this earlier, but I assume you are visiting employees using this because it's not going to be very convenient for customers to use it as parking given the looks of the buildings in the back, and I understand the hope that they would improve those buildings looking in the back but then crossing a street/alley could also be a problem. And so going back to my original question of do we know what we really need back there and what will be used as opposed to what works. PD The answer is we know we need more parking unless we just want to do let the buildings expand without any. We really (inaudible) Andreino's mainly because it's a night use and they can borrow parking from...but general businesses, without question, will need more parking. You're right, eventually for the parking to be most effective, they'll have to develop some sort of rear entrances, they'll have to make the buildings more attractive. There are many...you know, El Paseo...again, President's Plaza is a real ..i 10 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 parking lot. A lot of people use it, and since it was used, a lot of those buildings did get remodeled and got oriented with accesses to the rear. It's not an uncommon arrangement, it's just that right now—again, it's not inviting for anyone to park there. DT I guess the real question too, we have the Palma Village Plan which was never fully implemented for various reasons. I guess...is the City prepared at this time to proceed in a timely manner to accomplish this, or is this something that 20 years from now we'll be looking at and saying it hasn't worked, hasn't gone forward. PD The answer to that is something the Council will have to answer. Staff recommendation and hopefully the recommendation that you go to them with is that, which is kind of like the initial premise of the discussion, is what do we have to do. If we're not...and that's part of the motivation for scaling it back to some sort of...providing options that provide some sort of an economically palatable solution, that if we're not prepared to do something in terms of expanding parking, we should forget about expanding parking and then just look at prettying up the alley, making it functional. But �., whatever we should do, we should do something, and if we're not, again if we're not prepared to take on the financial burden of building this thing, then we shouldn't do anything. Whatever it is, we should give the property owners, both the commercial and the residential property owners, some certainty as to what to do with the future. The residential ones on those vacant lots can go—they can build houses on them. People who have existing houses, they know they can fix their roofs, and it's worthwhile for them to do that without having their house torn down a year from now. So a decision should be made and committed to. DT So as far as the perusal of this commission, if we were to approve one of these plans, perhaps we would want to put a caveat on it that we do it either in a timely fashion and/or abandon it and not move forward in any way so that people can take away some uncertainty on their properties, both on the business and on the home side. PD Yes, absolutely. Si A follow-up question on Commissioner Tschopp's comments. Did GPAC or staff ever review the possibility of, let's call it an Alternative C that would deal with the existing parking shortage only rather than with the expansion. For 11 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 example, creating pockets of parking in conjunction with an employee parking management plan, something that would effectively eliminate the existing problem but not be directed towards the possibility of future expansion? PD The answer is no. The plan that—one thing that we didn't want to see is a lot of parking and then a house and then a lot of parking. Again, in terms of the residential environment, we wanted to see continuous house frontages on the circles. This plan probably lends itself most to that in that you can jog back and forth 25 feet without...you know, we could probably do these one at a time without significantly impacting the residential character, have that line go in and out. The 46 feet becomes...well, the 46 plan requires continuous aisles on the side and that probably, it's got to go (inaudible) or not. But this one probably could go, and it does that...you know, for a 50-foot lot, it adds five parking spaces, which is 1200, 1300 square feet. Or, again, if we were doing it, it could be kind of like on a first come, first served basis. If someone wants to do their remodeling now, they can take advantage of two sections or three sections and pick up 15 spaces, 20 spaces, and then we can kind of assess and as case by case goes on into the future. SC Okay, any more questions of Mr. Drell? Now, I do have some blue cards here, if there anyone wishing to speak in regard to what we...okay, please step up. DM Good morning, Madam Chairman and Commissioners. My name is Donna Madsen and I live at 73-341 San Benito, and I first want to say in response to the question had Mr. Drell met with any of the homeowners of commercial people. I want you to know that he has bent over backwards. I had many long detailed conversations with Mr. Drell, and he is very thorough about providing material, making suggestions. And his coming up with Plan B, of taking only 26 feet, instead of the 45 feet of our back yard, makes an entire difference because, for example, Mary McGowan's Irish Inn is short of parking, and if you take 45 feet of my property and of Ms. Rodriguez's, that parking all night long, it's a jolly place, and lots of wonderful people that socialize late into the night, would be parking within six inches of my bedroom window, with the 45, but with Plan B, I would have a 20-foot buffer. And I'm already talking to my gardener about trees and bushes and everything to put in on my side to help buffer that. And that makes my home still livable, so I really recommend and hope that you can go with Plan B or with Commissioner Lopez's suggestion to leave it as is. Nothing has 12 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 happened for 25 years, and the future is certainly generally uncertain for all of us at this point. Another suggestion would be is to take one of the commercial lots and turn that into a parking lot. So, thank you for your time, thank you for Mr. Drell who has listened and who has come up with Plan B and other suggestions. We very much appreciate your sensitivity to the quality of life for our homes and properties, as many people have had this property for...Lucy has had hers for 30 years, it's been in my family for 50 years, and we very much appreciate your thoughtful and considerate thinking on this project. Thank you so much. SC Either Lucy Rodriguez or Bertha Perez? LR Lucy Rodriguez, and I've lived there for quite a while. Right now... SC Can you give us your address also, please? LR Oh, 73-361 San Benito Circle, and one of the things is that I was never notified that this was happening until just a few weeks (inaudible) I live up in northern California. My daughter lives here, my kids were raised here and ••• everything, and 1 was a little bit disappointed because I wasn't notified of what was happening. I got a Portola but nothing about the alley. I will see that whatever is reasonable, that it will benefit for the City or whatever, but a lot of the businesses there on the alley, they have never really done anything, I mean my yard is surrounded with block all around, and so is Donna's and a lot of the back yards there. I realize that they're old, but it's mostly the businesses that it looks, to me, more shabby, because it makes it kind of dark. And I was there for a lot of years and I saw a lot of things, and the alley does look kind of rundown and everything. It seems like there...what is it, the 26 is okay, but it seems like the businesses should do a lot more of the back because that's what looks more untidy to me. Thank you. SC Bertha Perez? BP Hi, my name is Bertha Perez, and I do reside at 73-361 San Benito Circle. do agree with Mr. Drell that something has to be done. This has been planned for many years, and nothing has been done, and we'd like to fix our area, too, but we've all been kind of in limbo. And 111 1 think you do need to kind of take care of the looks. And the 26 feet I think will be perfect and r.. have the alley looking good, and then people would park back there, you 13 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 know, with the trees. And you know, we do our part and the businesses hopefully they would do theirs because it does, you know, people are afraid. I live right there and wouldn't walk back there. It's scary. You need lights. I have two kids that are going to COD, so I am going to stay there for a while, so it would be nice. And it sounds like you guys...he has a really good plan, he does. And I think it would, you know, people driving along 111, too, you'd see a much nicer area, because when I drive, you know, you can see everything out there, and I do think a wall and maybe some trees and nice parking, and the businesses, I'm sure, would work, you know, I'm sure once they see all this they'd put money into their own businesses. They'd make it look better because they do want their clients to, you know, park in a safe area and I'm sore they would put more money into it, they would. Right now, they're not because the road's cracked and who wants to drive back there, who wants to park back there. Nobody. So it sounds like a good thing, and the City should invest money into it because I think it would just better the whole 111 area. It gets used a lot, it gets used quite a bit, it's the main road. So I do agree with him. Thank you for listening to me. SC Thank you. Anyone else in regards to this? Please come forward. TP My name's Tim Palmer, and I live at 44-900 San Clemente Circle. Can I point to the map real quick...(inaudible)...where's the car wash at (inaudible) PD And what you're seeing is the superimposed potential house that can occupy a lot after the expansion. TP Are we talking back here... PD You're right here. TP These are proposed? PD Yes, all the white things are actually proposed showing that the remaining lots can still accommodate a single-family. TP (Inaudible) PD It's still zoned R-1, yes, and those are 1,600 square foot pads. 14 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 TP I do have a window tinting business Phil was referring to, Filter-Lite, but the car wash has been there many years, there used to be a hardware store where the cleaners is. I've put up with noise, the Red Barn partying, it doesn't make much difference, I've been there for 35 years almost. And about 20 years ago, this same thing that Donna and Rodriguez was speaking of, everything is in limbo about what to do, so again like Phil says, why should you put a roof on your house if you're not sure how long you'll be there. The City had a lawsuit against me being there running a business in a residence, and it's been that way many people before I ever bought the home in 1970. There's always been a painter in there, an electrician, it just lends itself to that kind of environment. I want to point out one more thing. When I was back in the Planning Commission a few years ago, probably when the lawsuit was against me, thanks to Ray Diaz, but where the line should have separated residential and commercial, knowing that Palm Desert was one of the fastest growing cities back in the 80's, and that was (inaudible)eliminate San Marcos, keep all the circles with residences there, keep San Gorgonio, but anywhere from (inaudible) to south should have been eliminated way back then, knowing the growth potential for that area. I think it was decided when the City wanted to go to the Cook Street ••• industrial area that a lot of this part got neglected and so therefore they didn't need mine, they didn't need Donna's, etc., etc. And that never got implemented. But that way you don't have the residential people trying to get through to the Highway on that and make that all parking and expand the buildings. But move the alley or road there, offset it like it is further to the est and run the road up against that wall with your buffer zone and keep that all commercial but take everything like me out of there. I'm like a boll weevil, I don't care where I go. But I have been there many years, and it is very frustrating like Donna and Rodriguez said. And the poor guy that owned the car wash couldn't even repave his parking lot because apparently that's not a desirable business to be there. And, of course, they've opened up another "restaurant/bar" across San Marcos way, and I think there might be room in that parking lot for golf carts to park in the "designated" size of spaces. But I wish them good, I've known them for a long time. Take as much as you can now because you're going to need it. I go along with Phil. Don't hesitate again and again and again, year after year for 20 years in doing this. I'm willing to work with the City in any way, but my suggestion is do it now. I hope to live another hundred years but the City's going to be here for 500 years. Thank you. SC Thank you, Mr. Palmer. Anyone else? 15 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 TP Could I say one more thing? I don't mind the pocket parking, there's nothing wrong with that for now, until...people have been parking in the streets and everywhere as far it goes now, you may as well not put those three residences behind me, make that the parking lot if those commercial people need that parking. The previous owner a long time ago was storing cars back there, and the City made him tow the cars out of there, and it was his property. Of course, it has since sold, but make that parking back there. It's too small for those three proposed homes to get in and out of San Clemente Circle. I mean, just by walking it, looking at it, and living there every day. And as far as the amount of parking on the frontage road and in the alley, I look at it every day, and I see plenty of parking left over as I drive by there five and six times a day. But I would do the major move if I was the City. Thank you. Sc Thank you. MC Hi, my name is Michael Castelli. I own Castelli's Restaurant (inaudible) Andreino's. Thank you. SC Can we have your address, please. l MC 73-098 Highway 111. 1 think, first of all, Phil has been working very hard to try and do something to the back of the alley, and for me and the rest of the people, we need to know if it's going to happen. Second of all, 15 years ago I opened my restaurant. It was a very small restaurant, I sat 30 people. Steve Smith here told me you need to put landscaping in the back of your alley because we are going to make this alley beautiful, and that was 15 years ago. I have since remodeled three times. I seat almost 170 people. Why is it I do not have a parking lot? I'm probably the only business that doesn't have its own parking lot. Thank you, City, for letting me expand and do that. Two years ago I expanded and I probably have the most beautiful building on the back of the alley that is the ugliest alley in the neighborhood because you said we are going to make it better. So we all are waiting for you to do this. Other things that are...I speak for Radio Active and the pet hospital, that that alley, which is supposed to be a street because you do the water and everything, needs somehow to be fixed because you can't drive through it. And this guy has been preaching to get something done, so think what really needs to be done and figured out, and I feel sorry for the homeowners, figure out if we're going to do something or leave it because Sabby and Dave, you guys were both at First Bank, and you've seen when 16 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 `NW you drive through there how bad it is, especially when I have delivery trucks, I have everything, nobody can go through there. It's a hazard. In the comer, you can't drive in the alley...I'm sorry, street...you need to fix it or leave it for another 15 years and make people make the backs of the buildings beautiful. For what, I don't know. So I think I speak for a lot of the people here that we need to make a decision about doing something with that. Thank you. SC Thank you. Si Mr. Castelli, let me just ask you a quick question while we have you up there. What I'm hearing is that your point is that the City has a responsibility to maintain its streets and roadways and that that particular alley or street is in need of some of the City's attention. With regard to the parking, whose responsibility, and you're a business owner, whose responsibility do you think it is to create parking for private businesses? MC Well, I tried to do this. I bought the lot behind me. Si I'm not focusing on you. r.. MC Right, I understand that. Si You said you talked... MC Okay, I tried to do something. I bought the lot behind me and was going to buy the lot next to me for parking, but the City said we do not want parking between two residential houses. So I'm in limbo waiting til hopefully the City figures out something to do with the parking. I don't have the answer for the rest of the business owners, but I think the rest of the business owners could expand their businesses similar to like I did, all the way to the alley, and have the parking if they wanted to. Similar to like we did at Keedy's, the back of Keedy's, you have parking all the way in the back there, and it's nice. Thank you. SC Anyone else? LW Good morning. My name's Locksi Witte, and I live at 44-870 San Antonio Circle. It's the property with the swimming pool. I'm here today because my husband can't make it and he'd like me to actually bring up the fact that the r.. Core Commercial Area Specific Plan and the Palma Village Specific Plan, 17 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 the first which was adopted in July 1987 and the second, the Palma Village Specific Plan,which was adopted June 13, 1985, is showing up again in this new General Plan. And the alley, according to the City's implementation plan, is going to be an assessment district. My question is does it mean that if the City does not get 51% of the property owners approval on the new tax, this whole plan won't go ahead, or is there another method the City is going to implement this whole plan? The other thing is, I agreed with Dave Tschopp that if the Commission does approve this, that there be a time limit on it. It is difficult for us. If you're doing 26 feet or 45 feet, the structure in the back, which is the living unit for us, is going to be gone, and our air conditioning unit is 30 years old, it's going to go. We have to decide whether we want to sell the property and move on, but the thing is I found out that I'll have to disclose, if I'm going to sell my property, what's going to happen to the alley in the back. So it's going to put us in a bind, you know, what we're going to do. So I'd appreciate the consideration that if plans are going to be made, you know, that we residents be informed what is going on and that there's a time limit on it so that we can get on with our lives. My husband had to put in the pool when he became disabled, and that was money we pumped in, and now even the City's Hou,ing Authority is not going to buy up the property for affordable homes because it has a swimming pool on it. So...thank you. Sc Anyone else? Okay, Mr. Drell. PD That last question. It is our...maybe it's an act of faith that we...which was reinforced by our experience in the past with Presidents' Plaza—that since we are doing this for the benefit of the commercial property owners, it is our assumption at least half of them will be supportive of it. If it turns out that half of them aren't supportive of it, and basically what we do with Presidents' Plaza, we first gave them the proposition. We said we will invest a million dollars in your parking lot if you agree to an assessment district to maintain it. And if they would have...my assumption was that if they said forget it, we're not going to maintain it, we would have probably walked away from the deal. So our assumption is, and it's all everyone's doing this, that commercial property owners will be supportive of that deal. Another thing I'd like to talk about, which is the...those houses that are going to back onto this alley are going to be noisier. It's not going to be like living in Big Horn or out in a quiet residential neighborhood. There are going to be benefits and burdens on those property owners to stay there, to live there. If they're the sort of people who like the guy who lived behind Ruth's Chris, if they went to 18 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 work at 4:30 in the morning and had to go to sleep at 9, then that's not the place to live. On the other hand, there are benefits to being right next to the action. If you're someone whose lifestyle is compatible with being in that location and being able to access the businesses on 111, there's a benefit. The burden is it's going to be noisier. So those are not going to be...for someone who likes peace and quiet, it's not the place to live. And hopefully...but we still believe that it's better to have a house there. I grew up 50 feet from Sepulveda Boulevard, which we used (inaudible) at that time was the freeway, the main freeway between San Fernando Valley and West L.A. and Santa Monica, and it had benefits and burdens, you get used to it. In New York City, you have multi-million dollar penthouses on, you know, Fifth Avenue. It has benefits and burdens, and hopefully the people make their choices who enjoy the benefits to live there. I think overall, it becomes better for the whole neighborhood to have those houses. Any other questions you have for me? DT To address some of the concerns and move us forward, I guess, as a part of the General Plan, can we draft something that would be a proposal. Assuming that we will adopt some stance on this, some change, can staff draft a proposal that's included in the General Plan and a specific time line to get it done. PD Sure. DT So that if the businesses don't agree, if this doesn't happen, etc., and so forth, that the area would then not be disturbed. PD Or Plan C comes in where we just clean up the alley. And it is an alley. It's a 20-foot, and Mark could...it is a 20-foot wide littered lot that was created by the original subdivider that created the commercial and residential parcels. What happened in those days often, that lot would be offered to dedication to the County and actually what appears to have happened maybe here, it actually happened with a lot of the "alleys" in town, the County never accepted the dedication. When the City incorporated, we assumed all of the County's right-of-ways, and then they kind of disappeared, and no one remembered about these things. And so some of these alleys, although technically those dedications are in perpetuity, I'm not sure if we ever were able to find whether we actually accepted the dedication of this thing. 19 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 MG We have not accepted the dedication here. I should say, though, that we're in the process of identifying all of these offers of dedication that weren't accepted by the County. It's a paperwork nightmare trying to find them, and then we intend to accept them all in one action. So this should be considered a public alley. PD And again, hopefully a design...this might be someplace where we need speed humps. That's another issue. If you can bring those trees fingers then it tends to visually narrow it and tends to slow people down, but that would be the other thing, part of the design, to try to figure out ways to control the speed. SC (Inaudible) on any of this today? Si I thought we were going to do it all together when we get to it. PD It would probably be good to discuss. It's up to you, but while it's hot in your mind to either give discussion or give us direction. It's up to you i Si I don't know. We haven't done that with the rest of the General Plan. Are you suggesting we deviate from that? I thought we were going to wade through the entire Plan and then get to the discussion. PD Well, these items where we have folks here that we might not want, they might not be interested in waiting until we wade through everything else. SC Well, my feeling is if we're going to go ahead and do it, I would like to go ahead and actually go all the way and go with Plan A and have the 264 spaces. We have those businesses facing Highway 111. They are old buildings, and even though the parcels are small, there may be someone that may come along and remodel them and have one larger building instead of two or just expand to the alley and we would have more employees and more people who would be coming to the businesses so that we would need more parking spaces. And it would be just like Presidents' Plaza that has been restriped and restriped a couple of times, and we cannot squeeze any more parking spaces in there. And, again, if we're going to do it, let's go all the way and do it correctly and have all the other businesses in the back clean up their act and make it more pleasant and more...how do you say...crime-free, if there is any crime back there. And I do agree with 20 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 tow Commissioner Tschopp in having a deadline when all of this should go ahead and be completed. CIF I would concur. I sat on GPAC and listened to many people speak about what it is that needs to be done. My view of Plan B is it's simply a band-aid approach. I understand the impact on some of the homeowners, but our job here is to look 20 years down the road and try to do what's best for the entire community. So, therefore, I would feel that Plan A is the best. I think that we need to somehow amend an ordinance so that the owners of the buildings are required to clean up the back side of the buildings. I think that if the alley is a public alley and that is the City's responsibility, that that alley needs to be cleaned up. I think that adding parking would help along with landscaping and trees and then putting in the required time line to make sure these things get done and that the property owners are not left in limbo because that's another thing I'm really hearing is, you know, do something. And this would be my idea. DT Well, first I'd say that I think that in some respects that area is a blighted area, and it truly needs the attention of the City and the concerted efforts of %W the Redevelopment Agency and traffic, engineering, etc., and so forth. Having said that, I'm not convinced yet of either A or B plan because I haven't really, it hasn't really been demonstrated the number of parking spaces that are needed, and I haven't really seen any documentation that the City has the resources to do it all in one shot. And I'm afraid if we adopt the wrong plan, we could be sitting here 20 years from now saying we didn't get it done again. So in some ways, I kind of lean to Plan A, the 26-foot movement, to hopefully get the thing off and running, to get that area cleaned up and get things approved. At the same time, looking down the road, it would probably make more sense for Plan B, so I guess I'm saying at this point in time I still need some time to really study this. But I truly think there has to be a concerted effort and we need to have the businesses involved in cleaning up the back area. We need to make that...it's not an alley, it's a street...and we need to kind of acknowledge that and/or take away that possibility of it being a street. I'm not convinced that people, customers, will walk across the alley/street to the businesses the way it is right now, so if we were to implement either plan, I think we need to somehow make certain that it truly does benefit what we're trying to accomplish there. So, I lean toward the 24-foot alley, the Plan B I guess is what it is, only because I'm concerned that to try to implement Plan A may not get done in a timely manner. Whatever we do, I think that we need to 21 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 make certain that we draft a proposal that truly states a time line that it be accomplished and if it isn't accomplished, that it be abandoned and then the alley simply be cleaned up and improvements made by the businesses to the buildings. JL And I would...I guess I'm looking at it a little differently, and I think that...where I'm coming from is I believe that the burden of the parking issue needs to be shared a little more than 50% as pertains to the commercial developers on that alley. I think that we need to do something. Shame on us for listening to people who 15 years ago were told something and nothing has happened since. I think that we need to move on this. I think we need to do something. The alley is...and I drove it this morning when it's the quietest...it looks terrible. I would not want to have a business...I guess I would be embarrassed to have a business or have a home that backs up to such an ugly situation. Mr. Palmer has probably lived in some of the...Mr. Palmer mentioned...some of the great places there, the Red Barn and the car wash, and they've been there for an awful long time, and I've used those facilities. I've never gone to the Red Barn, out I remember anyway, but I think it's time to do something, and I think that the residents, the commercial owners on that alley/street, whatever you want to call it, need to share in the burden on this. And I think that it needs to be shared by the people who develop the businesses there. And to have allowed that alley behind their buildings to deteriorate to the point that no one will go back there and use it..l mean there is parking back there, and no one uses it. I mean I know that anybody in their right mind wouldn't park back there half the time. So, I mean, it needs to be shared by the commercial people, it needs to be done, there needs to be a time line on this. At first I was looking at the Plan B, which would not have as much of an imposition on the homeowners along that area, lets them maintain their property and most of what they have right now. You know, I'm not opposed to the wider one, but I think we need to do something, and I think it needs to incorporate not only the widening onto the property of the residents, but the burden needs to also include the redevelopment of the areas behind the businesses. And we should not just make this one...I mean we have an opportunity now to take an area that looks pretty bad and create a very unique alley or walkway, business environment, that would impact positively to that area. And if it's a meandering street that goes through with street lights and trees and beautification, I think that's where we need to be. And I think 15 years down the road or 20 years down the road when we look at that, we can say man we did a great job with that, and now we would be using that instead of 22 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 `.. Presidents' Plaza to compare what we should be doing in the future when it comes to developing needed areas that need to be improved. So I guess I would say I'm in favor of something happening immediately or as soon as possible, and it would involve additional parking back there. I'm not going to say one way or the other, but I do think it needs to happen in a timely manner. Si So it appears we have some Commissioners in favor of Plan A and some in favor of Plan B; of course, I'm in favor of Plan C. Let me explain what I mean by that. I think...I'm trying to focus on a)what the real problem is in that area and b)what the City's responsibility is for fixing that problem because I, for one, don't believe that government is responsible for fixing all problems. But there is some shared responsibility here. Plan C as I envision it would incorporate many of the elements of Plan B, which is a 26-foot incursion but on a modified basis. Meaning that parking, at least initially, would go in that north side of the alleyway on a spot basis, hopefully where it's needed and hopefully where it causes the least amount of disruption to the residential neighborhood. And the idea is that it would solve the existing problem, not try to solve the potential future possible expansion of some of these private tow businesses. And the reason I say that is I think that the most urgent issues, the existing parking shortage and traffic and circulation and all the attendant problems that it creates, we need to deal with that right away. The City's role in terms of future expansion would be to do the same thing that it did on Fred Waring and on Monterey as part of the Palma Village Plan, which is to enable, to create a zoning which enables the private developers to use the north side of the alleyway for parking if future owners decided that their expansion acquisition of additional property and conversion to parking lots, which owners on Fred Waring and Monterey have done. So it works. The Palma Village Plan works, and I think it simply needs to be implemented more aggressively on that part of the alleyway in terms of meeting the needs of future expansion. And that, of course, would be at the private owners' expense. The City's role, furthermore, should incorporate the cleaning up of that alleyway, immediately. I mean, that's a problem. No matter what happens with traffic circulation and so forth, that alleyway is a disgrace, it's used a lot, it's dangerous, it's unsightly and needs to be dealt with, and I think that is the responsibility of the City. Furthermore, I think that the City should encourage, through subsidies, such as it has in the past, an improvement, specifically of the rear of the Highway 111 businesses because some of those rears are just atrocious. If they meet Code, I think the Code needs to be changed because really, it seems like an unhealthy 23 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 situation in the back with some of those buildings. The new parking, when I say on a spot basis, I think should be done via an assessment district, which would be funded partially by the City, as it did, for example, at The Gardens parking structure, and partially by the private business owners because I do remember the restaurant owners, the George Metsovas's (spelling)and others that came before us and said I want to build my building and, trust me, this is all the parking I need now or I'll ever need. Well, now that they're coming back to us and saying I don't have enough parking, I don't think the City should dig into its pockets and relieve them of the problem that they created for themselves. So I think there needs to be a sharing of partnership in resolving the current parking problem. So I would suggest an assessment district, not just for the maintenance but for the construction, with the costs to be shared between the City and the private property owners. Finally, I concur with what I think I heard all my fellow Commissioners say, which is it's time. Enough is enough. So we need to adopt a time line and either the plan gets implemented or we abandon it, say you know what, we the City have fixed up the alleyway, we've tried to work with residents, we've tried to work with property owners, there ain't going to be no more parking, so move forward on that basis. If we get to that poirt, that's at least better in terms of letting everyone know where things stand and where they will in the future. So I think we need to adopt a time line that has a do or die deadline and stick to it. That's my Plan C. SC There you have it, Mr. Drell. JL Could I, Madam Commissioner, make one more comment. On some of the comments that Commissioner Jonathan made, I'd like to say that this property on Highway 111 is prime real estate, and right now it's not being fully utilized and hence, the City is not realizing the sales tax revenue that they could get from this piece of property. So I would hate to see us adopt a Plan C which is simply to just clean up a bad area in back. I think we need to look forward, and I think the City has set the precedence by helping or being instrumental in creating parking in Presidents' Plaza, The Gardens, and even the mall. So I think to come into an area that is prime property, that needs the City's attention to help that property fully develop into its highest potential, is something that should be done and probably should have been done 20 years ago, but now that we're here, I hope that we get it done and move forward. So I would hate to see us adopt Plan C. I hope we move forward and make the best of this property for both the neighbors, .r1 24 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 the homeowners on the north side, and the businesses on the south. And, yes, I would expect the businesses to pay their fair share. PD Since a large part of this decision will depend on how much we think we can afford or are willing to pay, and that really only lies with the Council. Obviously, if you were given a blank check, to make everyone happy, you could come up with an Option D. So what John and I will try to do is draft a summary discussion, which we will forward to Council expressing all of the various permutations of opinion. You're all...I kind of agree...it really comes down to what we can afford to do. And, therefore, in essence convey that to the Council because I don't you guys are really in a position to make that decision or even make that recommendation because, again, you don't have the checkbook, let alone a blank check. Si Well, what I envision, and we're having discussion now only because you suggested it because we have folks interested on this matter. What I envision is that when we're done...I mean, this is part of the General Plan discussion, so what I envision is that when we're done with the whole discussion, that what we would draft is a comprehensive narrative about our tow recommendation because that is our role, it's just to recommend to Council where to go from here. So you're not suggesting that this be a separate... PD No. In the land use element there is a section on the Palma Village Plan. That's where this would go. It's just that, again, you guys are at a disadvantage. This isn't just a Planning issue, this is a Redevelopment issue which is ultimately influenced by how much money you have to spend. And the Council are the only ones who can make that decision on how much money they want to spend because they can look at all of the various programs in the City and priorities so that...I think what I heard is that we should do as much as what we can afford and be prepared to do and we should try to do as much as what we can afford to do. Ultimately, it will be the Council's decision of what we can afford based on how important they think. So we'll give it a shot. MG Could I ask for a couple of points of clarification from a Public Works perspective. At the last meeting, last time we talked about this, a couple of residents were concerned about San Marcos and whether it should be closed as part of this plan. I'd like to get some feeling from you in that regard. tow 25 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 i PD Yes, I meant to talk about this also. One of the general issues in circulation is you should either have limited access or loss of access. The reason is what you don't want is a little bit of access where the traffic that wants to go in a particular direction gets concentrated in one spot to the detriment to those particular owners...everyone else loves it because they don't get any traffic, but the people who are on that one little street that gets all that traffic. So we did get a letter from property owners on San Clemente Circle requesting that San Marcos be ultimately closed, which solves one of the problems that Mr. Palmer talked about, people using that as a shortcut to San Gorgonio and that way. I would say in this case it makes sense. Good news is we picked up another lot and could build another house there. And that is partly...which we'll get into when we talk about the rest of the General Plan. Also part of my motivation is that we're actually, we're kind of housing- poor in this City relative to our housing demand and therefore the reason for preserving as much housing as we can, where we can. Si Just to comment on that very briefly and to answer Mr. Greenwood's question. Yes, I do favor the closure of San Marcos for the reasons that Phil discussed. I think it makes sense. This is coming out of!eft field, but maybe you ought to consider, and maybe you already have, one way access on the alleyway as we have on certain other secondary access streets. Because it is not as wide as a full street, it may make sense. And the third and final comment with regard to Mr. Drell's comments is you were saying that we all favor the approach that the City should spend what it can to fix the problem. I do not agree with that. I think that there is shared responsibility, as I mentioned earlier, between the City and between private property owners. And I guess this is my final comment. Plan C doesn't just fix the alleyway, it does make the financial commitment and the full commitment to eventually get in all the parking that is required. It just does that initially through spot parking and subsequently through encouragement of additional parking for private developers that want to expand and create additional space on what they should recognize and evaluate whether it's a prime area that deserves that kind of investment. PD The Palma Village Plan did contain specific requirements for reimbursement for the businesses that actually expanded. It's just that certain coordination issues that individual property owners just don't have the ability to do, that the City has to do, it's hard as an individual property or business owner to take the time and effort to organize people all over the country that the City has the ability to do. 26 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 %wr MG And then assuming that we were going to close San Marcos to vehicular access, would it be reasonable to assume that we would want to maintain pedestrian access to the neighborhood with an access to the businesses. We're talking about closing it to vehicles but not necessarily walling it off completely. And then another issue I would like to clarify is that I think each of you mentioned the look of the alley now. Were you talking about trash and weeds and that kind of stuff or were you talking about architecture and fences. JL I think it's a little bit of everything. CF All of the above. MG What we could do in the short term is have the Code Enforcement Department go out there and take a look and see what codes are being violated and have it spruced up. And we could probably do a one-time sweep with Public Works forces and pick up all the trash and pull the weeds and then make sure it's on the sweeping schedule. If you'd like, I think we could take some interim steps along the way, since this is a many-year +�•► process. CF That would be great. DT The interim step in nice, but I think we need to take, again, the big view and the long-range view. To answer your specific question on San Marcos (inaudible)the possibility of being stoned by some of the people that live on those streets, I've used that cutaway for years. It's very convenient, and having said that, I would say absolutely you should take a look at closing that and maintaining the integrity of the residential streets there. But I'd hate to see us put a barricade there as we've done in other parts of the City which I don't think look like they've been completed. And, again, I know that's a problem of how much money, but it's just my thought. MG I think with this one where we're building an entire parking lot with walls and everything, it would be easy to incorporate to make it look like an integral part of the project. JL And i would concur. I think we should close San Marcos and work with that and make that a desirable location. I'm sure residential access would be fine, but again, incorporating an entire look to that alleyway. I would also 27 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 concur with Commissioner Jonathan that I'm not sure I really agree with financial segments that you were talking about. I think the narrative needs to address the need to move ahead on this particular project, a time line based on the finances would be fine, but the need needs to be that we need to move ahead on this. 1 think that as good a job as we've done with other parts of this community, we really have neglected that area, and I think we need (inaudible) SC I concur also with the closing of San Marcos. MC (Inaudible)closing of San Marcos, one, is the access to my restaurant, which is a very busy restaurant. Two, putting a band-aid on Sabby's Plan C would mean I would put a parking lot between two residentials, and it is not creating anything better. Dave and Jim were doing...what we need to do, I think, is what we did on Fred Waring and Portola. You have the opportunity, you have the needs, make it nice, instead of trying to put a band-aid on something that definitely needs a bigger band-aid. SC And we agree. PD Okay, moving on, let's now turn to Portola. You have your own copies, hopefully that you can see. This is a somewhat simpler problem. Again, what you're seeing is the proposed expansion or the ultimate improvement of Portola as recommended by the GPAC, which includes a four-lane road with a median, with bike lanes on both sides, and at least 12-foot parkways along the sides showing a double left from Portola, westbound on Portola, and it shows what's remaining. To summarize quickly, between De Anza and a half block south of Santa Rosa, it shows at least 180 feet left after that dedication or that acquisition of right-of-way. Some areas...north of Catalina, we have actually 150 feet, so while those areas are not...the right-of-ways will come relatively close to the existing houses, there is still a lot of room left to do something with. The GPAC in this area recommended medium density residential, which is less than ten units per acre, which would in essence...where you have one unit, you'd see two. Staff is not especially convinced that we could induce anyone to actually do that. I don't think...it will not be...again, I don't believe it will be appropriate or likely for a property owner to take out his one house and put two houses there. And back to the other comment is that in these redevelopment area situations, you don't come up with a perfect solution, but the solution that we've used in the past, that I believe has worked is professional offices where we have lots that are 28 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 deep enough. We can put, if we want, we can, given the shallowness of these lots compared to some of the other places where we've done this, limit it to one-story, but if we want...again, the private sector, private property owners to take a lead on the redeveloping of these areas, you have to give them a use that's clearly economically superior to what they have now. I don't believe medium density residential is enough. Conceivably, high density residential might be enough to induce redevelopment of these parcels. The shallowness also makes that somewhat difficult. North of Fred Waring, since it includes also creation of a (inaudible) right southbound from Portola to westbound Fred Waring, the lots right north of our kind of lineal park and narrow it down to 63 feet, which is still theoretically developable, that you build an office building and then a parking lot next to it and then an office building and a parking lot. You wouldn't be doing parking lots in the back, they'd be side by side. North of Rancho Road, it expands to 91 feet, which again is...unfortunately these areas are not wide enough for a park, too wide for a parkway or very expensive for a parkway...you know, we did that thing on Fred Waring because there we were under 50 feet, we were between 40 and 45 feet, and it's very nice, but it's a very expensive solution for the remaining real estate. Again, it's another whether we want to pay for it or not. The other issue relative to the remaining property owners that are behind, nothing knocks down the noise like a building. Reports that I've heard from some of the property owners who now live behind our Fred Waring parkway, that it is significantly noisier now than it was when there was a line of homes there, that even an eight-foot wall is not as effective at stopping noise as 13-foot-high buildings, which are 20 feet deep. Again, given the fact that there is no perfect solution, coming up with a land use that is likely to be pursued by those property owners in a timely manner, the same issue of...this is not something that we're going to...this is one of those solutions where we're just going to try to come up with a land use that works and hopefully the private market solves the problem for us. Our suggestion would be north of Portola, as shown on the map, I mean north of Fred Waring, that we determine what the right-of-ways, approve the right-of-way and then allow the property owners to figure out a way that they can economically develop the remainder. And the same on Portola, I mean south of Fred Waring to De Anza, that I think either high density residential if you don't want to do offices but I think historically small offices have worked very well for us in these situations. SC Mr. Drell, do you remember what three lots were purchased by the architects that they mentioned last time, was it by Catalina? 29 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD I believe they are right here. Those have the benefit of this weird, kind of (inaudible) lot that looks like it just has a swimming pool on it. So, that area ends up with almost 150 feet of depth left. SC Over the three lots right there on Catalina? PD I believe so. SC So it would be north of Catalina. PD North of Catalina. The City actually owns a couple lots. I believe they own these two. SC The two gray ones? PD Yes, those were owned by the...we bought those from the old water district. Sc Any questions of Mr Drell? CF Just one question for Mr. Greenwood. When we discussed this in GPAC, we talked about a four-lane and a six-lane widening of Portola to the freeway. Refresh my memory as to why the four-lane is more feasible. MG Well,the modeling for Portola shows that the future volume will be something in the range of 25,000 cars per day, where it's about 20,000 cars per day now, a little bit less than 20,000. So that 25,000 to 28,000, maybe up to 30,000, could be handled adequately by a four-lane road. And there's also...Portola would make a very good bike route. It actually connects the residential part of south Palm Desert to the rest of the City in a pretty reasonable way. So from a staff perspective, we recommended going with four lanes with the bike lane. And it should say too, the map here shows two-way left turn lane, and it probably should show raised median instead of two-way left turn lane and show turn pockets at the appropriate streets, so it's not completely accurate. So our feeling is that Portola can just be a four- lane road. And it's also a matter of the practicality, that once we get down towards the 111, we simply cannot get a six-lane road in there without major impact to existing viable businesses that I don't think we would...we just wouldn't entertain doing that. Something I'd like to add while I have the floor is that while you're considering zoning here, hopefully you'll take into account what the quality of life is to live in a house on a street with 25,000 cars per 30 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 day. That may happen in other areas, but in Palm Desert, it probably doesn't match the quality of life we'd like to portray. And also from my selfish perspective, all those driveways on a busy street cause traffic problems, so I'd just like you to consider that. CF Thank you. SC Mr. Greenwood, again with Commissioner Finerty, the four lanes right now, most of Portola has four lanes right now except between Rutledge and Highway 111, so that's most of...that's the only change that's going to be done there? MG Right. It's a very narrow four-lane now...it's under construction between Fred Waring and 111 where it had been just a two-lane road that was very heavily impacted. The problem between north of Fred Waring is that they are very narrow lanes, ten-foot lanes right next to the curb, and we do have some safety concerns there. We would like to spread out a little and develop the standard road section rather than just four lanes jammed into what really should be a two-lane road. r.. SC So actually most of the changes are just going to be taking place between Rutledge and Highway 111 on Portola. MG That's what's portrayed here, and it's not to say that some other miscellaneous widening wouldn't happen further to the north as part of making Portola a truly four-lane arterial road. North of Rutledge our problems are somewhat less, the lanes are reasonably wide, so I wouldn't see any major impacts to properties north of Rutledge. SC So you don't think that probably 20 years from now we'll go through this whole thing again and will be wanting six lanes on Portola? I mean, it's happened on the corner of Portola and Fred Waring going south where we made the right turn there, now all of that will need to go ahead and be redone again, and this was only done a year ago. MG Portola is the one street that we just don't know. The model doesn't show that much growth on Portola. Where it shows Monterey increasing by at least 50% in traffic volumes over 20 years, it only shows Portola growing by like 20% maybe, and modeling is a very, very imprecise tool, so we have to be careful. So I can't guarantee that someday we wouldn't decide that we 31 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 art needed the six lanes, but that would, you know, 20 years down the road we may decide that those businesses that are now viable and very vibrant, by that time maybe they've moved on, maybe that property is available. But with the situation we're given right now, today, it's difficult to recommend anything more than four lanes. SC So actually, we're looking just for today but not really towards the future. MG No...well, for 20 years. PD Sometimes, again, depending on what you have. And we're just not talking about...in this case, we're not talking about taking the back yards of some homes, we're talking about knocking down some large new office buildings and restaurants, which we're talking about those buildings that are between De Anza and...I think we're also talking about some homes as well south of De Anza on the west side where the back yards of those condos. MG (es. PD So we basically have so much new, high-quality development that I think we're stuck for 50 years, short of major demolition of very high-quality, very expensive structures, with four lanes. Remember, people tend to make their choices. When a certain road gets at capacity and gets to a certain amount of inconvenience, they start moving elsewhere. So that's why we're going to the six lanes everywhere else. Sometimes you're stuck with what you have. Si I have a question, I guess, (inaudible) as well. And I'm sorry if I missed this, but what is the status of the Portola freeway interchange, and would that impact your assessment of the future of Portola. MG The Portola freeway interchange is a current CIP, Capital Improvement Plan, project. In fact, we have a meeting with CalTrans later this week to discuss it. We should plan on seven to ten years for construction. I have researched what the traffic model data show, how does this Portola interchange affect Portola near Fred Waring, and it shows very negligible impact. The model was run with and without the Portola interchange. And I think the volume difference at Fred Waring was about 1,000 vehicles per day on 25-30,000. The impact on Portola in the Frank Sinatra area was, like, 20,000 per day, ..d 32 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 so the impact with and without the interchange is much greater further north. Once we get down south of the Whitewater, it has a very modest affect. Si Thank you. SC Any more questions of Mr. Drell? PD Okay, we can move on to... Sc Does anyone here want to go ahead and speak in regard to Portola? Okay, go ahead, your name and address. MH Margaret Hartswom (spelling), 74-038 Catalina Way, facing right on Portola, so I'm glad to hear it's okay for 50 years. Anyway, the comment that I really want to bring up is that there has been talk about a stop light at De Anza. Now, how is that going to impact our Portola Del Sol complex, and I don't know if there's anyone here from next door Portola Village, because it's quite, quite difficult and has been getting worse and worse since the extra lane was put in and now with the four lane, it's going to be even worse. Now, cars charge right by the curb and we're wondering how this stop light at De Anza is going to impact our getting out to go south or north probably will be a little easier because the light will possibly be red and hold back the traffic, it can turn out to go north. But what about the light at Fred Waring. If that's green, there are going to be cars going there. You cannot turn out, and if there's anyone wanting to turn west on Catalina, they stop right there in front of our complex. So even if you have a chance on one side or the other on the traffic, there's going to be some impeding you by turning onto Catalina or the light being green on Fred Waring. So we have a hundred units, and I thought there would be someone else here, but I think it should be considered the possibility of a sensor light there like Portola Country Club is, and I gather now the one up there by Chaparral with the development across, the light is already in. It's not working, but it's in. Because it's going to be really rough to get out. So I know that individual residents across on the west side of the street also have the problem, but we have the problem of getting out of our complex. And with the light at De Anza, we feel that it's going to hold up traffic, yes, but if it's green, they're going to be charging because now there are four lanes going to be open. And it's going to be awfully difficult for us to get out. So we would like the Board to please consider the possibility of if you're determined to put De Anza in as a light, r.. then what about the possibility of some kind of a sensor light for us when 33 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 somebody wants to turn out, that that should be considered or thought about or debated about. Thank you. Mg Actually, I can address some of those comments now. There is a traffic signal under construction, as we speak, at De Anza and Portola. You'll see the signal poles in the air within the next week or two. So that is a fact. As to additional signals on Portola, we would have to recommend against that. The Country Club and the projects and private developments that do have signals are generally those that have 600 units or so or even more than that within their confines, and so you have quite a number of cars coming out of there every day. So we have to balance the capacity on Portola versus the needs of the residents that are adjacent to it. Where I just finished saying we thought that we could get away with four lanes on Portola, if we were to install signals at every 300 feet along Portola, we would definitely need six lanes, so we balance one impact for another, and we need to be very cautious about that. We hesitate to recommend a signal at additional private development gates. Sc Thank you, Mr. Greenwood. CM Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Chris McFadden of McFadden McIntosh Architects, 72-925 Fred Waring Drive, Palm Desert. We're in the process of acquiring three of the parcels at the corner of Catalina and Portola, and I wanted to come up and mention in support of the fiscal aspects of what Phil is proposing here. We gave fair market value, asking price, on the three parcels, and we understand that at the last meeting that we were here, our real estate agent was approached by three or four other owners who have a situation where they can't let go of their properties along the Portola corridor there because of pending City issues that something may happen to those parcels, and upon disclosure, they lose their potential sale. They have approached us, or our real estate agent, asking for viability with the pursuit of the commercial program there, and we're going to be alleviating some of the traffic concerns, I think, with residents pulling out onto Portola there. Ours is kind of a unique project, we've done this in the past with the (inaudible) financial group up the road there, and the land values really hold themselves much better with the commercial use. SC Chris, I want to confirm you did buy the lots north of Catalina Way. CM That's correct. There are three parcels, and we are trying to acquire a fourth. 34 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 SC Anyone else? Okay. Phil? PD Back to the land use map. Also in response to some of the comments that we had last meeting. Going from south to north, there is the issue brought up relative to what used to be called Laliberte parcel, this is the inholding parcel right south of Canyons at Big Horn, within the—and representative of that property owner questioned the City's redesignation (inaudible) from low density residential to hillside reserve, that it was some sort of retaliation of some sort. The response relative to timing, the GPAC and the General Plan issues dealt with broad land use issues throughout the City, they never really concentrated or focused on single parcels generally. It is true, when the application was submitted, staff was forced to focus for a moment on an individual parcel. As part of the tract map, it showed a topographic, the topography of the existing...of this parcel, which indicated to us that it had slopes in excess of ten percent, which is how we define hillside. We also went back and looked through the files of...back to the original submission for the Canyons, and you have in your packet a slope study that was done by Harold Housley for this property, which indicates that a substantial portion of it, most of it, is above ten percent. The area that is less than ten percent, part of the area, part of the parcel, lies in the channel there, which is the flat portion. But the substantial portion of the developable property is above ten percent; therefore, by definition by how we define hillside in this town, makes it eligible for the hillside reserve. In connection with that, we need to, at least until such time as there is a determination relative to our hillside ordinance, amend our land use designation for hillside reserve which states that the designation permits the development of one single family home on lots of not less than five acres. That's truly inconsistent with our hillside ordinance since we differentiate between...until we get a detailed slope analysis for each parcel, we can't tell exactly what that toe of slope is, and therefore the hillside ordinance allows that determination to occur when applications are made. And those areas that turn out to be in the zone or that are less than ten are treated differently and are allowed one unit per acre. So I'm suggesting that the language of hillside reserve in terms of the land use table state residential hillside reserve, one unit per acre to one unit per five acres, and then the language would also say in the text residential hillside reserve designation (inaudible) development density for lands located on sloping terrain primarily within the foothills of the Santa Rosa mountains. Depending on slope, single family homes on lots of one unit per acre to one unit per five acres shall be permitted. So in essence, since our General Plan designation is general and may include some flatter areas, this allows for that. We talked 35 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 about 111, we talked about Portola. The issue of...we had a gentleman speak and we had correspondence about those properties at the north side of the wash on Cook Street on the west side. Staff is recommending that we accept the suggestions by those property owners, one being that triangular parcel right adjacent to the wash with all those constraints, to allow that for professional office. Also, the three residential parcels on the south side of Cheryl, that now have an office building directly across the way and that are separated on their west by the entrance driveway to the golf course, that those three are appropriate also for office professional. Moving further north, the other issue of concern is the northeast corner of Country Club and Monterey where we have both letters requesting that this be redesignated for neighborhood or community commercial and a letter from the Director of the Redevelopment Agency concerning that this stay residential since it will...the redesignation will inhibit their re-leasing of the vacant Albertson's store. So my suggestion last meeting, as it.is now, should be...and we have created a study category...that it is possible that the final land use in this property might be something other than residential. Until we get a little more focused on actual proposals, that we're not prepared to recommend any changes, but on the other hand, it's not slamming the door on it...there still should be some consideration of a change in designation. We're not still sure which. You also got a letter from a property owner at the northwest corner of Frank Sinatra and Portola, which you had processed actually an application for a little office complex on a four-acre parcel right there on the corner. You guys recommended approval, it kind of stopped at the Council, partly because of the General Plan, partly some Councilmembers maybe did not think it was appropriate. That applicant/property owner again is requesting an office professional designation. Given the...again, the same issues that we're facing on Portola now we're...30 years ago, Portola was perceived as an appropriate place for homes. Today, the realization that it is not. 30 years ago probably if someone had any bit of foresight, they could have predicted that it was not a good place for homes, but again that's part of the nearsightedness that some decisions get made on. I believe these corners of major arterials, while maybe okay now for a home at Frank Sinatra and Portola, long-term I think a better use is professional office, both from the impact on those property owners and secondly, just visually having a property at the corner that is open to the comer, without walls, where you actually see it and have open space and landscaping, and fronts of buildings I think is preferable to have walls and comers which otherwise we end up...and we end up needing 36 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 r.. to have high, high walls to provide acceptable environment for the residents. So I believe that these...our position then for this property was that professional office was appropriate, and that is still our position. ?? Mr. Drell. PD Yes. (Unclear) PD We're calling it a study area as well so that, again, when that applicant comes back, we'll have a hearing and therefore there will be a focus hearing and the folks in that Shepherd Lane neighborhood will be able to weigh in again on the design of that project and the advisability. You had asked for an analysis of the alternatives, and we have almost all of that. What I don't have at this time is a table for the existing General Plan in this area. I've been able to...one of the problems is that we are dealing with different land use categories, and a number of things have happened since...that have impacted our General Plan already. In looking at the existing General Plan, `.. you see this big swath of low density yellow. If you add up that acreage, it's a bit more than two sections, so it's about 1,300 plus 160, it's about 1,500 acres, 1,400/1,500 acres. If it had been developed at three units per acre, which is a typical low density standard, we were looking at approximately 4,000/4,500 units. What's happened in the interim to a lot of that yellow, you see east of Cook Street, part of that is Cal State, so the opportunity to develop housing west of Cook Street has disappeared because Cal State is there. What you're seeing on the west of Monterey used to be 300 acres of residential, but it's turned into Marriott Shadow Ridge, so between Cal State and Marriott Shadow Ridge, of that 1,500 acres, we took out about 500 acres, so we're down to 1,000 acres for residential. The other thing that's now happened, when you look at the new maps, is that the northeast corner of Portola and Frank Sinatra has been purchased by the Redevelopment Agency, and it's now showing up as a potential Desert Willow III. So from that original 4,000/4,500 acres of housing that we were showing in the original General Plan, we've taken out of housing designation approximately 600/700 acres, almost half of it by virtue of Cal State, Desert Willow III, and Shadow Ridge, therefore reducing the remainder down to something more like 2,000 or 3,000 units. But remember, the existing General Plan probably provided for approximately 4,500 units in that yellow, developed at low density. 37 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 Let's start with the preferred alternative, which is the same as what we've seen, and it produces a total number of 6,000 units, that the assumptions being that the low density would be at three units per acre, the medium density would be seven units per acre, the high density would end up developing at 18 units per acre, which is about 70% of... CF What was medium? PD Seven. CF Okay, and that's an average? PD That's an average. CF Because we're saying it could be four to ten units. PD Four to ten. CF And the 18 that you're saying is an average, it could be ten to 22? PD Yes, and they were saying it has to do with what I see...in talking to perspective developers and what their thinking is, seven units per acre it to me the most typical medium density because that is what you can build detached without alleys and unusual layouts. Three, again, is what our typical low density has been on average. 18, again, as I see projects that are 13/14 units per acre and projects that are 22 units per acre, so 18 1 think is what a fair expectation is. And we came up with 6,000 units. What is fairly typical...the thing that doesn't change in each of the alternatives is the amount of commercial. We're looking at, as you see, ten million square feet of varying forms of commercial, and that actually doesn't include the University. CF Phil, I have a question. PD Sure. CF You're saying that the commercial doesn't change. PD Substantially, yes. 38 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 .. CF Okay, I'm looking at our current plan for commercial, in the EIR section, which is Table 3-1, and I'm showing that the existing commercial plus the potential commercial, comes to over 15 million. PD For which....we don't have a table for just this area in the EIR. CF No, not for just this table, I'm talking for the whole City. PD For the whole City. Okay. CF Okay, but most of what's going to get changed is at this end of the City, correct? PD No. The other misleading correction we have to make...in the EIR, when it says City-wide... CF Right. PD ...it's also including the planning area... tow CF Nope, nope, nope, nope, not on this one. I see where it says sphere of influence and planning area, and I'm not quoting from those. I'm quoting from existing City existing square footage, City potential square footage. PD Okay. CF And that would be 15.5 million roughly. PD Okay CF The preferred alternative decreases that down to 14.1 million. So there is a difference. PD Between that and existing General Plan, and if you look at...if you compare the existing to all of the alternatives, you'll see where that change occurs is north of Gerald Ford to what is 351h. It's showing all industrial, and in the alternative, we've converted most of that to residential, so we have increased...we have... CF So what we've really done is converted that to high density residential. 39 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD Well, let's look at the...in the preferred alternative we converted to high density and medium density, correct. And that is where you see the difference...again, my estimate of the existing, assuming all the yellow got developed as residential, which we know it's not, about 4,500 units in the preferred goes up to 6,000 units because of the increase in...if the fact that it's not all low, that we have medium and high in there. CF Well, I know that some of the Planning Commissioners didn't sit on GPAC, and I just think that it's a good thing to point out that there would be a reduction in commercial and what's being touted then is to increase medium density somewhat and high density substantially, and that is what GPAC's preferred alternative is. And although I sat on that committee, I did vote against it, so that's why I'm trying to show the other side of the story. PD We'll hear all sides of the story. Si What's the reduction to commercial in this area? CF They don't have it. PD It's approximately...basically, we calculated commercial based on 25 percent coverage, so basically we took out about 160 acres and figure 10,000 square feet of development per acre, that's 1.6 million. Si For this area. So it would have been, let's say 12 million, so under existing land use, down to about 10.3. PD Yes. And the motivation for that partly had to do with the imbalance between...and housing demands generated and the traffic generated from all that commercial was not being balanced by the housing production which after we take out Shadow Ridge, the University, and Desert Willow III golf course, it probably ends up with about more like 2,500 units. So then we looked at...so that's the preferred alternative. There was then a less intense alternative...let's look at the less intense alternative, which is the last table, which reintroduced low density. Basically, what all the alternatives attempt to do is to create two neighborhoods, or actually three neighborhood sections. You have the Shepherd Lane neighborhood, which is proposed to continue to develop along the current low density pattern. You have the University neighborhood on Cook Street, which has commercial on Cook Street. And I'd also like to point out that all the alternatives, including the 40 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 Now existing General Plan, what is not showing up on this General Plan map remember was the Wonder Palms development agreement which designated the Cook Street/Gerald Ford as commercial. All the alternatives are in common pretty much on the rest of the commercial showing the Cook Street Frontage as varying forms of retail commercial or office or mixed use. What it has essentially done is reconfigure the commercial. The existing plan shows it more on Gerald Ford, and it is our feeling and the feeling of property owners and the GPAC that Cook Street is a more appropriate avenue for the concentration of commercial, not Gerald Ford, and so all the alternatives show the corner of Cook Street extending down to Gerald Ford as various forms of commercial. And then creating neighborhoods between Cook and Portola, another neighborhood north of Gerald Ford between Portola and Monterey. So, in each one of those a less intense alternative low density residential was reintroduced, reducing both high density and medium. CF Mr. Drell, how can we compare the less intense use to the current zoning? How would those numbers of low density residential of 1,242 compare to how it's currently zoned? What would be the total number of units under ... today's zoning? PD I said under today's zoning, assuming that we were having...based on this map, it was about 4,500 units. CF Of single family. PD Of units, period. The only multi-family...in the Wonder Palms agreement, they had ten acres, which doesn't show up on this map, ten acres in the study zone, you have ten acres of multi-family, but all the rest of it was low density. But there was, as I say, there's about 1,800 units of it, 1,800 acres of it which at three units per acre is at least 4,500 units. CF But I need to try to compare what the less intense alternative is to what our current use is, and I see that you have it for the less intense, the preferred alternative, the staff recommended alternative, and the more intense. We're just missing the last piece of the puzzle. PD We're missing a chart. The good news is that the existing General Plan has only three land uses in it, it's all low density, and I said, the low density 41 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 residential is approximately...it would be 1,500 acres and at three units per acre, that's 4,500 units. CF Let me ask you this. If our current zoning, and this is for the entire City, not counting the sphere of influence or the planning areas, our current zoning is showing that there's a potential for another 6,861 units, of which 5,199 are low density. PD No. CF That's throughout the entire City. PD Throughout the entire City, correct. CF Correct, okay. So would it be fair, then, to say that most of those 5,199 units that are potential would exist in this north sphere area? PD Yes, that's correct. CF Okay. So if we were to do some sort of comparison, would we also further y III draw the conclusion that the potential medium density of 1,124 units would exist in this area? PD I don't understand how you got the 1,124 units. CF There's 1,124 units of potential medium density residential. PD City-wide. CF City-wide, correct. PD Yes. CF Okay, and then the same thing would be for the high density, the 537 units City-wide, but the majority, overwhelming majority, would be in this north sphere. PD Yes, that's true. CF Okay, thank you. 42 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 PD Where that existing number is somewhat misleading...in looking at that, residential units were imputed to the University campus, residential units were imputed to the 170 acres that we now own for a golf course and residential units were imputed to Shadow Ridge. So that's why dealing with the existing General Plan is a little bit tricky. Not only are the designations different but we have areas that are designated that are now...effectively they've been taken out of the housing market. CF Okay, could I just make one point to my fellow Commissioners before we move on to another use. If you take this less intense recommendation, you see that the residential for low density is calling for 1,242 units, but realizing that the existing, the way we have it now, would be 5,199 units, so it's a considerable reduction in low density housing. Similarly, with regard to the medium density, where our current plan calls for 1,124 units, it would shoot up to 1,618 units. And again, with high density, existing is showing 537 units, high density would then be changed to 1,471 units, which is almost tripling that, and this is the less intense use. Si This is for that area. CF No. Si Or is that in total. The numbers you just gave us, is that the total, Cindy? CF Okay, in the less intense, those numbers are for that area. Si Right. CF What I'm comparing it to are numbers for the entire City, but you heard me ask Mr. Drell would most be in this area, and he said yes most would. Okay, so this is the less intense use. Si What are those numbers again? CF 5,199. Si Right. CF 1,124. 43 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 SJ Right. CF And 537. Now if you take the same exercise as we go through all of the other scenarios, the preferred alternative, the staff recommended alternative, and the more intense, you're going to see the difference between current and what the proposal is, and you're going to see low density go down dramatically and high density/medium density rise dramatically. PD And there's no question that it happens. That was intentional. It was a perception that we're running out of land, we have the...that 10 million square feet of commercial development generates huge amounts of housing demand, the University will develop and generate huge amounts of housing demand, and given the land we have left, it calls for a different character of neighborhood in terms of density, not necessarily a different character in design, and I can argue that it can actually be superior in terms of design. But there's no question that the intent of the alternative is to maximize the housing potential on the remaining land we have left to attempt to meet the housing demand created by that 10 million square feet of commercial. SJ A couple of questions on that chart before you go on. And by the way, it would be helpful to have a chart, as you've done over here for existing. PD We can. Can someone go over to Bob Ritchie's to see if he's done one, he was supposed to be doing one for me. SJ My question to you, though, on the drawings, on the existing uses, you've got that brown area which you call residential study zone. PD Correct. sJ But in fact that is not an existing, I mean, that's not a zone. PD This isn't a zoning ordinance, this is General Plan. In reality, everything north of Gerald Ford in the Wonder Palms is designated as commercial. SJ Okay, so when you say existing, that brown part is not...that doesn't truly exist. PD It is what our General Plan shows, and it made the zoning designation subject to that plan, which is that Wonder Palms plan which in essence made 44 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 everything north of that, in terms of zoning, planned community development. We've seen no actual projects on there. Technically, we could have some residences. If you remember what was in the Wonder Palms,they talked about mixed use, potential of multi-family. It's ambiguous. Unfortunately, it's still ambiguous to a certain extent. Si What I'm trying to get at is the existing General Plan shows what land use where you've got that indicated is a residential study zone...we don't have that as an actual land use in the existing plan, do we? That's a term of art that I've only (inaudible) PD Yes, we did, we do have it. And the reason was in this area there was a line drawn and, as you recall, 2,000 feet from the railroad tracks and the freeway, which is what that line represents. It said depending on individual projects, we would kind of assess them on a case by case by basis whether they be residential or commercial, that because of the impact of the freeway...and so it was kind of left up in the air as projects came in. That is actually what that weird area is. �► Si There is an existing land use in the existing General Plan, the 1995 General Plan, that calls that a residential study zone. PD Well, it was actually created by the North Sphere Specific Plan, which is what this came out of. Si Okay. My other question is, when we look at the roadways in the preferred alternative, it seems to me that they kind of reflect reality and what we expect to be reality and then some of the other renderings, the roadway portions are very different. For example, in the more intense use, we don't even have Cook Street going to the freeway, so is that just an artistic thing? PD No, that's a...again, I got these delivered this morning, that's just a mapping error. Si Yes. I knew that was an error there, but in some of these other ones, the roadways don't connect, that's just a mapping (inaudible)... PD Yes. 45 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 Si ... inaudible we looked at the more comprehensive roadways like in the (inaudible) P Y preferred alternative or the staff recommended alternative, that would probably be a more accurate representation. PD In that those were far less conceptual. Obviously, when we get to the staff recommended alternative, that was far more (inaudible) because actually that was done for very specific projects and it reflects very specific project design. Si Some of which we've approved, including some of these roadways that are reflected... PD A few of them, but most of them, you know, we've approved 35`h, we've approved Technology. 35" is, you know, midway between Monterey, midway between... Si Dinah Shore PD Dinah Shore and...don't fixate so much on the roadways, this is not a circulation element. It just kind of gives you an idea. Okay, this is a number which is probably a more realistic number in terms of number of housing units in that we have deleted Marriott, which we know is not going to be housing, we've deleted the Cal State, and I guess my guesstimate turns out to fairly accurate, and we've deleted the golf course. We would end up with...and we added the one ten-acre piece of the Wonder Palms plan, which specifically is designated as high density, and we get 2,100 units. That gives you kind of an idea. CF Okay, so what you're saying is from the entire City, for low density, we have 5,199 units that could be developed. But after you take out the University and the Marriott and all these other things you're alluding to, that's going to reduce all the way down to 2,004 units? PD 2,184. CF So you're saying it goes from 5,199 to 2,184. PD For this area. I don't know where you're....your 5,100 number isn't exactly in this area. 46 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 CF Yes, I understand, it's for the City, but I didn't have anything else to work with, I just pulled it off the table (inaudible) PD But this is the actual...that if we take out an existing zoning, we take out the areas which have been taken out of the housing market by other land use decisions, we're down to 2,100 units. CF So what we would really be doing, for example, on the University Park existing, comparing that with the less intense University Park, it would be a difference of 2,004 existing units versus 1,242 low density units. PD Right. CF Right? And since the existing plan is not calling for medium density, we would be adding 1,618 medium density, and we would be increasing high density from 180 units to 1,471, correct? PD That's correct. �• CF Thank you. PD Yes, there's no question, and again, we're...as Scotty said you can't change the laws of physics. We have 'x' amount of real estate...actually, when we did our initial projection on commercial development way back at the beginning of GPAC, we were looking at only about 6 million square feet of commercial in our rough guess, of which we projected a housing demand of 10,000 units. ?? In regard to the existing in the EIR that you're looking at, the existing housing units... CF Right. ?? The University is not factored as residential, it's factored as public for the University, so the gap that you're looking at is much less great than it may appear. That is, the EIR reflects the 200 acres plus or minus the University as University, not as residential, so the gap between existing as Phil was suggesting it in the General Plan is not that great. It's not as great as... 47 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD I think we're looking at 'x' number of units, and there's no question that the only way to increase the number of units on a fixed (inaudible) real estate is increased density. And I guess the question becomes how do you do it, do you do it primarily with medium density or...how do you play with the mix? We saw the housing demand of at least 10,000 units. As you see in all of the alternatives,we fall pretty short of that. Any other comments? But again, there's no question that the numbers are going up. That's the whole point of the exercise. CIF But our point as Planning Commissioners in reviewing this is not to necessarily buy into what GPAC or staff says about numbers going up. Our job is to look at how successful this city's been, what that success has been predicated upon, and to determine how our success will be enjoyed in the future. PD Okay. CF Okay. PD So we have the less intense...as I say, it increases...reintroduces low density into those two neighborhoods, call it the University neighborhood, we can call it the Wal-Mart neighborhood, and as a result of doing that, the number of units drops approximately, I guess 2,000 or 1,700. Next, the EIR looked at a more intense alternative, which the high density increased even more, resulting in another...it went up from, for example, high density went up in the more intense 293 acres, you have more high density than medium as opposed to the preferred alternative where it's kind of reversed, 268 to 181 medium to high, and it's basically reversed, and the high intensity we have 293 high and 176 and still the low is still confined to the Shepherd Lane area. And then the number of total units increases to 7,300. And then lastly, we have what we're calling the staff recommended alternative, which incorporates... Si Is the other one a GPAC preferred alternative? PD Yes. And the difference between them is in essence the incorporation of the two plans that you saw last meeting for the Wal-Mart neighborhood and the University neighborhood where low density has been not only reintroduced but is now in terms of...is now the largest, significantly largest category, 448 acres, and then medium density is, I mean low density is increased 48 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 `I significantly to 448 acres, the medium density is decreased significantly, high density is only decreased slightly or less so, but it is also decreased significantly. And, again, the unit total ends up being almost identical to the less intense alternative. Si That includes 286 residential use units in the mixed use area? PD Correct. Si What does that represent? PD In these cross hatched areas...and although the location of...you see there's a cross hatched area, red and white, on Gerald Ford right at Technology, although the developer of that property would be more interested in moving that towards the west towards the High School site. There is now product being produced where a commercial project will include residential on... Si Are we talking about high density residential (inaudible) ••• PD Yes, it would probably be high density, and the implied mix would be half commercial, half high density. (Inaudible) CF Don't feel bad, we just got them ourselves. When you talk about the mixed use being split between commercial and high density, how then does that 286 total units get broken down? PD Hard to tell, depending on the project. There is no specific requirement that they build residential at all, it just provides the opportunity to do it. And those areas are somewhat equal in area, probably half and half conceivably, maybe one of them wouldn't have any. CF It's market driven? PD Yes. (Inaudible) .w 49 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD It shows a little bit more commercial in that the preferred alternative, the...we Wei have correspondence (inaudible) from this property owner, in the preferred alternative that was shown as high density residential, and we're now showing that back as an industrial office park. The mix...again, the common elements in other respects is the commercial at the corner of Cook Street and Gerald Ford. It's showing school sites, elementary school, K-8, and a high school. Everything else is similar. The big change is the reintroduction of low density residential as the dominant residential land use. But if I point out that in terms of total number of units, what we've kind of done compared to what the original General Plan did when it designated all this yellow is if all this yellow had been built out low density, we would still have ended up with about 4,000 or 4,500 units. So what this does to a certain degree is compresses those units on smaller area of land as a result of taking those large hunks of land out of production. Si You just lost me. I thought you said existing would have produced 4,500. PD 4,500 if housing had been developed on Shadow Ridge, if housing had been developed on our 170 acres. SJ Going back to the... PD Going back to our original designation. Si But the chart shows 2,100. PD Yes, which is what happens when we take all of those out. So we've taken out, we've almost taken out half of the original designation of residential property by converting it to non-residential land uses. And, again, it will be somewhat more clear when we talk about traffic. When you have the destinations, and one of the requirements of General Plan guidelines, and one of the requirements of housing elements, and one of the requirements of State housing law it to attempt to achieve a balance between employment generating activities, jobs, and housing. Unless we want to eliminate a lot of this commercial development along the freeway, we are going to see close to a doubling of commercial development in the City with this development on 1-10, which will be creating a huge demand for housing. Those people have to live somewhere. If they don't live here, they'll be living in Desert Hot Springs, they're going to be living out in what you now see as County open space. The perception that...in talking to housing developers, we are living 50 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 ftm in a land, believe it or not. And the multi-species plan is going to take at least a third of that open space away. So the people have to live somewhere, and if we want to preserve the open space, and if we want to preserve 1-10 as a driveable freeway and our interchanges, if they don't live here, they're going to have to come into town on those interchanges. SJ Can I ask a question on a point you just made. Isn't there a more symbiotic relationship between residential and commercial. I mean, I've heard you say just now and before that commercial development creates a need for residential housing. But when people come in and occupy those residences, don't they in turn create commercial demands which creates...don't they have commercial needs which creates a demand for commercial development as well? Don't they have to go shopping and don't... PD Correct. And that affects the timing. We're not talking about the timing of these things, we're talking about...when the City is built out, whether it's five years or ten years or 50 years from now, what are the appropriate land uses given the physical constraints or impacts on those land uses. The development along the freeway is dictated by the impacts of being on the ... freeway. I don't think we want to put a lot of housing on the freeway. Also, the freeway is a positive impact on businesses. So you want to take a physical given, which is the freeway and the railroad tracks, that confers positive benefits on certain land use activities and negative benefits on land use activities. So what has always been proposed since day one in this city is that you want to put those uses on the freeway that positively benefit and that aren't impacted by the negatives, which is commercial industrial uses. So there is a symbiotic relationship, of course, between the two. They are both part of the City, they're both things that people, that businesses...with the majority of these businesses are actually...the commercial is going to be industrial office park. So it's not going to be shopping. But they don't build the...let me step back a second. This here is a little unique, being on the interchange. The commercial development of those shops are somewhat independent of the housing in that the traffic that comes through those interchanges obviously can't support...you already see the commercial stuff there before there's any housing at all. So the commercial development at the interchanges will probably occur and can occur before there's any housing at all. It's supported by the whole Valley. The issue becomes, in terms of housing for the employees, do you want those employees commuting in from Desert Hot Springs, or do you want at least a portion of them or as many as you can commuting from five blocks away or two blocks 51 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 away. We're not only talking about numbers, we're talking about length of trips, which has an impact on air quality. The other thing we're talking about is preservation of open space. Every house that is not built here will be built somewhere else in this valley, which kind of differentiates the two types of demand. There is permanent housing demand, and there's reserve demand. Permanent housing demand is probably closely tied to the local economy, how many jobs there are. People typically don't move out here and live here unless they're either retired or they have a job. Reserve demand is probably unlimited, since the market is the world. We could sell as many or as few resort houses...it's not limited by any local occurrence other than if we screw up the environment no one wants to come here any more. The issue is that as a city, that is the commercial, and will be the industrial of the Valley, once this area is developed, which is the same reason why Costco and the mall wants to be in the center and the same reason why the businessman now wants to be in the center, you want to serve the whole market as conveniently as possible. There's nowhere better than being in the center around the freeway. Is there a benefit to the city to its residents to have at least a portion of those people being able to live in close proximity, which takes the pressure off the interchanges. So in essence it tries to address the endemic problem in Southern California which is the absolute long distance commuting-based economy and to provide...in the long term what all the other communities in Southern California have faced too late is they try to get back to bringing people...you know, after the fact, they try to figure out a way to bring housing back to downtown Los Angeles, they're trying to do it in Orange County now after the fact, trying to bring more housing to get people off the 91 freeway somehow, and actually the market is supporting it. Unfortunately, it's too little too late. They came to that realization when most of the land was already consumed. The little dibs and dabs of housing that they can now build in the developed areas of Orange County probably won't have an appreciable affect. The goal here is to try to both create and...just in terms of numbers, trying as best we can. And again, we're only, as you see by even the less intense alternative, only meeting a fraction of the housing demand. The other thing is that what medium and high density does is provides a more diverse economic mix to better address the diverse economic mix of the job market. And, therefore, it provides a greater opportunity for those moderate income and lower employees the opportunity, again, to live in somewhat proximity of their place of employment. CF Mr. Drell, could you answer a question with regard to open space. 52 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD Sure. CF On a University Park preferred alternative as well as staffs recommended alternative, there's no provision for acreage for a park/school as there is in the more intense and less intense use. PD Okay, go back to what you just said. CF Okay, go to the preferred alternative. PD The chart? CF The chart...and you will see under open space park/school, there's a dash, there's no provision. PD Under the...there shouldn't be. Again... CF Okay, well that's what I'm trying to determine. PD Let me look at your....on the preferred alternative open space parks... CF And it has public reserves of 21. 29 PD You're saying 180 acres for open space parks. And then under schools, it's showing nothing, and it... CF Correct. PD ...shouldn't show nothing. It should show... CF If I could call your attention then to the University Park more intense and less intense use, it is showing 206 acres. PD The numbers should be 206 because the... CF Then what does that do for the total number of acres, then, what...is something else added in? PD No. Well, if you notice, the more intense shows more acres total. It shows 100 more acres total. The less intense shows (inaudible). One of the delays 53 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 was, and I don't know the source of it, our GIS guy was having a hard time taking these various maps and reconciling the acreages. Again, we were working on it for the last week and a half. The school area should be identical... CF In all of them, right? PD ...in all of them, yes. CF So you're saying that if we add the total of acres in the preferred alternative, we're going to come up with 2129, or is that going to increase by 206? PD It will be 22 something. Again, these...remember, general plans are general. They're showing general areas that...in attempting to quantify them, it is not necessarily productive. We're looking...in terms of target shooting, here we're hopefully judged on how close we...whether we hit the wall, not whether we hit the bull's eye. It's the zoning ordinance when we get more precise. Now what you see the most precise is the staff recommended 3 alternative because that was closely analyzed by an engineer who gave us plans, and our GIS guy still had to transfer those plans to a map, but I would say that one is probably...but again, it shows schools and parks zero on that one, too. CF Yeah. PD I think we're probably closer to twenty two five if we were to do it, but I think... CF And all of these that were prepared were based on medium density being seven and high density being 18. PD Yes. Okay? The reason why staff was recommending the recommended alternative is that instead of acknowledgment of what the current market is, the current market is still strong for low density and we have to give the owners of the property the ability to kind of start off their projects with what the current market, my feeling is and what I'm hearing from developers is that they're finding a harder and harder time finding vacant lands to build new projects, and this valley is going to be forced, just like we're being forced,to look at alternatives. And not necessarily new,these are residential neighborhoods that have been traditionally built in cities in Southern California for a hundred years or more and ironically is now what all these 54 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 older communities are going back to as they run out of land and acknowledge that based on the housing demand...and by exporting your housing, you don't solve your traffic problems, you make them worse. And that's been the lesson of Southern California. CF But there's also no guarantee that if there's even adequate housing, that those people that buy those houses are going to work right there. They still may decide to drive somewhere else because the benefits or the salary is more lucrative. So we can't count on just because there's a bunch of units that everybody that lives in that area is going (inaudible) right there. PD And I'm sure that everyone won't. I would guess 30% of them do. I believe that one, the fact that this will be such a convenient place to live... CF So you're going to be moving there? PD I'm not going to be moving there. I'm going to be retiring and moving... CF You're going to be staying in Idyllwild? PD I'm going to be retiring soon and staying in Idyllwild. I believe given a choice, and the market kind of supports this, people want to live in Palm Desert for the same reason why businesses want to be here. And so we have probably the strongest housing demand. Almost the identical unit that a builder builds in Palm Desert, he can sell for$100,000 more here than he can in Cathedral City. So there's already...given a choice, people want to be in Palm Desert. CF But I... PD The combination of being in Palm Desert, the convenience of walking distance to a mall, Wal-Mart, or a University, or an elementary school, or a high school, or where you work, I think will induce a fair number...and again, everyone that you can keep from having to come through that Monterey interchange or the Cook Street interchange or off the arterials (inaudible) is a saving of a trip. There's the issue of, one, a fixed number of units...and really, this is to a certain degree...for us to solve our problem, every city is going to have to make this same decision, of trying to address their housing/jobs balance because that's the only way you'll...there ultimately has to be a balance unless we have people commuting from San Bernardino, which I don't think we want. The other issue is if everyone has a reasonable 55 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 balance, and even if you have people making their own choices, their random choices, of where they work and live, you at least get a hundred percent utilization of the roadways, both directions. Unfortunately, when you have, and what occurred in, what was (inaudible) in L.A. 30 years ago when you had all the traffic, all the morning traffic going one way into jobs and all the morning traffic (inaudible) much congestion but you were only utilizing half the roadway. The ideal situation is for every city to have that balance; therefore, everyone can make their own choices, and you distribute the traffic on the roadway at least evenly in both directions. But, again, we're not even, unfortunately, even with the staff alternative, we're only going to meet a fraction of the demand. CF I would just like to offer for consideration another point of view of why it is that people like to live in Palm Desert. And it might be because of the resort- type community, and it might be because of the low density housing, and it might be because people have left the Orange County area and see how congested that is and have come here and decided maybe they don't want this to turn into another Orange County, and that we would like to preserve the quality of life that we're currently enjoying today. And I wanted to point out a quote our City Manager made from the Desert Magazine, and he's stating that the challenge now is to see that we don't deviate from what got us here. You know, what got us here was the resorts and our low density housing. Ortega warns we must now constantly look back and see what got us to this point, and he sees that as controlled growth, and I would agree with that. SJ Question, a couple of questions. The staff recommended alternative varies somewhat from the less intense alternative, and as I see it, it's in two major respects. Number one, the housing element, while the total number of housing units are almost identical between the two alternatives, there is about the same low density, much more medium density, and somewhat more high density. PD In which? SJ In the staff recommended alternative. In other words... PD Right. In the less intense alternative... SJ You take away from medium and you add to high density. two 56 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 PD There's less...if you look just at those areas where we changed, which are the two, you know, the Monterey and the Cook Street ones, there is...in the less intense alternative, there is less low density... Si Right. PD ...there is more medium density... Si Right. PD ...and less high density. So we made up...the 4,300 units has a more of a medium density orientation, less of a high density orientation. Si No. CF No, that's not correct. PD In the less... Si It goes down. The medium... PD You're comparing... CF The medium goes down. PD The medium... Si Hang on. I'm going from the less intense to the staff. PD Okay. Si And what you've done is go down from 1,600 medium density in the less intense... PD Right. Si ...to 900 medium density in staff... PD Correct. low 57 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 Si ...and conversely, you've gone up in the high density from 1,400 to 1,800... PD Correct. Si ...so it represents a shift. Total number of units is about the same, but you're shifting more into high density. PD But low has also gone up. In essence, the tradeoff has been between the less intense and the more intense. The less intense and the staff is that low density has gone up a bit from 449 acres in the....it's gone up from 414 to 448, it's... Si The total number of units is almost identical. It's 1242 versus 1340. PD 13, well it's 100 units. Si Yes. PD Okay, so it's gone up a little bit, but remember the bulk of that low density is in that... Si I'm just trying to understand why staff didn't just say less intense is about what we want, so...let me just finish the question first. PD Okay. Si So if I'm reading it right, part of it is the residential element with the shift from medium density to high density, and the other part, if I read it right, is that the commercial community goes down from 1.1 million to about 379,000 square feet of commercial community development, from 102 acres to 35. PD Okay, your observation is absolutely correct about the residential, and that is based on acquiescence to the developers request. Si Okay. PD And this kind of relates to my original comment about housing, that our solution to the housing problem the last 13 years is either low density or high density. We have built low density private single family or high density apartments, and the goal in terms of wrestling with trying to produce the 58 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 needed housing in a limited amount of real estate of the GPAC was to try to make that up as much as we can while preserving the single family quality of these neighborhoods. And that is where the medium density came in. Developers request, he wanted more high density. He also wanted more low. He wanted more than the traditional balance of high and low, and I had to struggle to get the medium in there because the medium density is a little bit more of a...for people who haven't done it, it's a product that has disappeared over the last 30...or it is only being reintroduced in those areas where they have to do it. So it is simply...you can say I caved in. A big piece of the community commercial that changed, if you look at the maps, was, and I should have brought this up because I think you have some correspondence relating to it, is that site at the northeast corner of Cook Street and Gerald Ford, you see the difference, where we once had the skate park, I mean the ice skating rink, and we had designated that as community commercial. In wrestling with that property since the ice skating rink disappeared, and one of the reasons why we had the ice skating rink there because it was kind of tucked up near the interchange ramp and therefore it seemed like a good place to hide something, under the interchange ramp doesn't make it a good...the same reason makes it not a .... good site for a neighborhood shopping center. The fact that it's on the wrong side of Cook Street, it's on the University side not on the housing side, the fact that it is obscured substantially by the off-ramp, that based on the property owners request and our re-examination decided that it is a better extension of that industrial office park which extends all the way behind the University than community commercial. So that took out a big hunk of that community commercial. And I don't believe there was any other change that we—part of that also might have been the addition of the mixed use. Si Yeah, I don't understand the map because we're taking away that area from commercial community in the staff recommendation. PD Right. Si But in theory it should be replaced with the industrial... PD Industrial should have gone up. Si Should have gone but it doesn't. r.. PD And it doesn't go up enough. 59 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 sJ Right. PD It went up ten acres, but it should have gone up, like, or the other one shouldn't have gone down as much. sJ (Inaudible) why the total comes down... PD If we added some more industrial over there, Mr. Noble's property, west of Portola...again, I'm... SJ And that's...we're hitting the wall, not the target, I understand. The other question I had was if we look at the map that's up there right now, north of the freeway there is a large area designated as RH, and actually the yellow section to the west of it is RL, RH being high density residential, RL being low density residential...none of that area is incorporated into your tables, is that correct? PD Correct. We're only looking at the area south... sJ Did staff consider that those areas and others to the north of the freeway could be part of the solution to the housing demand created by the University? PD The answer is...or a couple of things...the answer is yes. The problem is then you have to get the people over the freeway, which becomes your constraint. If you ever drive around Orange County, that becomes a big problem. The answer is yes. That's why we put so much high density there. It's not designated there now. Realistically, we don't think that that amount of high density is realistic. We would actually even be recommending, and what didn't get changed in the graphics since we were all concentrating on the City portion, that the less intense alternative is more appropriate north of the freeway as well. But the answer is yes, that is why we, around 1000 Palms, we beefed up the zoning or are suggesting to the County they beef up the zoning as well to make up for what we see at least a 6,000-unit deficit that even in the less alternative we will end up with. But again, that's a lesser solution in that it forces people going through the interchanges which are the choke points in our circulation system, and when they get screwed up, not only do the people coming off the back going to have a problem but then you can't get on and off the freeway. And then again, you end up with 60 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 the Brea Boulevard or Imperial Highway interchange with 57 freeway that takes..it has about seven lights, it takes you about 25 minutes to get across. SJ Well, that's not the only solution to those issues. I've also seen those areas, and the reason I asked if staff studied that area as part of the solution is we also see bridges connecting neighborhoods that are on two sides of the freeway without access onto the freeway. PD Remember, we are looking at doing Portola. SJ Although Portola will have an interchange (inaudible) but Washington used to have (inaudible) PD They are very difficult, very expensive, given the width of that...and it can be done, but...I'm agreeing with you. SJ I'm not recommending it as a solution. I'm asking if staff studied the feasibility of the area north of the freeway as a potential part of the solution. w► PD Yes. SJ ...understanding that it could involve elements that either would be cost- effective or wouldn't be, such as a bridge to connect those (inaudible) I don't know. PD The answer is absolutely. That's why you see those designations. SJ Okay. But it is not a part of the staff recommendation at this point, nor is it coming to us from GPAC saying what we really need to do is focus on that... PD No, the answer is it is part of the staff recommendation...that if you look at the preferred alternative, if you compare the preferred alternative to the less intense, okay, or if you see a huge amount of high density in the preferred alternative. SJ Okay, and the staff recommended... PD And the staff recommended...and the reason is we never changed. When we did this map, the concentration was getting all the intricacies of the City portion. We never...but the recommendation, and just realism, that I don't 61 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 { ..r1 think...when you concentrate too much high density in a monolithic...our goal even in doing the high density was not to have huge blocks of high density like they have in Orange County, which again you get...the goal in any mixed...the concept of mixing uses enough is that you get...it's like monoculture and agriculture, you get alternative peaks of activity that work better with the traffic system and relieve congestion because you have people coming to work in one direction, people leaving from work from their homes as opposed to a huge block of residential where a monstrous amount of people are moving in one direction. So in looking at what you saw in that huge block of high density north of 1000 Palms, we just, in retrospect, said that's just too big, that's too much concentration of high density and, therefore, we...in the less intense alternative, you see it's about cut in half. Si Right. If we expand it, if we kind of lifted our heads up a little bit and expanded the area to incorporate even in the less intense usage the residential that potentially can exist north of the freeway, we would create all the housing the University would ever be projected to require and then some. PD I don't believe that is the case. Remember, it's not the University. The University is not the main housing engine. It's the biggest business. Si Well, at a minimum, it certainly opens up a tremendous amount of additional housing beyond (inaudible) ?? Actually, it does not. Remember that there are job generating uses also existing in proposed north of 1-10. And the traffic model shows good fit relatively with the preferred alternative between the jobs we create and the homes we create. We have just the reverse problem in the University Park district. Si Look at how much housing you see north of the freeway (inaudible) PD No, but... Si ...commercial plan north of the freeway that's going to create that kind of demand...? ?? And the other uses that are there, that is correct. rnri 62 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21. 2003 PD Remember, even with all our housing that we're showing south of the freeway, we're only projecting a third to, 33-40% of the housing demand. What we're saying is that north of the freeway, at least that is what the traffic model is showing, that we are—it takes that...if you look at the history of every Southern California community, the sort of development that you're used to is only generating 30-40% of the amount of the housing needed to service the commercial uses, which explains why San Fernando Valley got developed. Once San Fernando commercial got developed, why San Gabriel Valley became the housing source, so we've been constant exporting a substantial part of the housing demand to the neighboring developing portion of Southern California in each progressive increment of growth, and that is—which works as long as you have unlimited land to expand to, at some point in time distance becomes a problem. Remember, there was the big push for people to commute from Lancaster/Palmdale into L.A., and then suddenly a lot of people moved out there and they said oh my God, there is a (inaudible), so there's a limit of how far you can do that. It's like an ameba, you get too big, you start collapsing from a...both in terms of congestion, in terms of how much people are willing to commute, in terms of distance. But in essence, the type of residential...and Cindy talks about Orange County. Orange County developed on the low density model. To say we don't want to become like Orange County, we are becoming like Orange County based on the pattern of development that we've followed over the last 30 years. You don't see it until...the congestion part doesn't come until the end, when it's too late. But anyway, you're absolutely correct. Whether we can influence the County to make those designations is a question. I don't think we're prepared to annex 1000 Palms, nor are they interested in annexing to us. CF But we're not talking about going from Palmdale to L.A. or something, we're just talking about going over the freeway from our housing. PD And the answer is yes, that's why we...theoretically, we tried to load up in the north to try and make up for what we knew...and remember, we're staring with the City...if you read the EIR, we're starting with a significant—we're at a significant housing to jobs deficit already based on our commercial we have today. Since we've developed very little, if you look at the map, three- quarters of our land development in the last 20 years has been in resort golf courses. We've been generating a lot of commercial development and in proportion very little permanent residential housing. Our primary residential ftm 63 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 j ..r1� housing source is still the old stuff south of 111, which was developed 30 years ago. CF We had stated at our last meeting that this session would go until 11:30? SC Right. CF And it's beyond 11:30. Sc That's correct. CF And I don't think we're close to any consensus. PD We might want to let the public speak. Si And I apologize, I do have a lunch appointment and I've got appointments booked through the afternoon. CF I do as well. That's what I had planned upon. Si Yes. (Inaudible) SC Well, we are resuming our public hearing also at six o'clock, but we were going to go ahead and not do the General Plan at six but do all our other public hearings that have been continued. So we have run over time, and your consensus is? CF I would move to continue this to November 41h as recommended by staff, and I think now all the Commissioners have all these little tables and charts, which we just got, and that will give them adequate time to study it and see what they'd like to see. Sc And then, also, do we want to go ahead and resume it at six o'clock in the evening, or do we want to have another session at 8:30 in the morning? SJ A suggestion would be, and I sympathize with those who have made a special effort to be and have sat here for, you know, these three, three and a half hours. I would be willing to devote at least a small portion of the initial 64 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 part of our meeting if people wish to come back, and limit the General Plan matter to maybe thirty minutes or even forty-five minutes, really cut if off at that point because we have a significant amount of ordinary City business to conduct after that. CF Yes, we do, and I would go along with the first thirty minutes for public testimony only with General Plan items. SC That's fine. (Inaudible) CF Ma'am, you're out of order. (Inaudible) CF You're out of order. You should please sit down. ?? Tonight we would have time for individuals to speak on some matters we've discussed today that might not be able to speak at our next meeting, which would still allow public input to everything we've talked about today, is that what we're talking about? CF Yes. SJ I think we would still continue to November 41n CF 4tn...so we'd have testimony tonight for a half hour and on November 4'n as well, whether we meet at 8:30 or six or both. SC Right. And then we'll go ahead and...we'll decide on that this evening after we go ahead and hear testimony for the first half hour. SJ By the way, this is now, what, our third meeting on... SC Yes, I think it is. SJ I think our last meeting we began at four and ended at eleven... CF Right. 65 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21 2003 i Si. ...so I think this body is committed to give this matter its full attention and to ensure that the public has ample opportunity to give input. We're as serious about this as anyone, so...I certainly regret if anyone is inconvenienced, but I think that if they have some opportunity tonight and then again on the 4'h and more if necessary, everyone will have a chance to be heard. So I would...do you require a motion to that effect? (Inaudible) Si Okay, I would move to continue this matter to tonight... CF For one-half hour. Si Six p.m. to six-thirty, with the hope that only those that truly are either from out of town or who would be inconvenienced to be heard on the 41h will speak at that time, and then to entertain recontinuing the matter to the meeting of November 41h SC Which we'll decide on the time on that... CF Tonight. I would second that. Sc All in favor? (All ayes) SC Opposed? Motion carries. So we'll reconvene at six o'clock this evening. Action: It was moved by Commissioner Jonathan, seconded by Commissioner Finerty, continuing Case No. GPA 01-04 to October 21, 2003 at 6:00 p.m. Motion carried 5-0. E 66 MINUTES PALM DESERT PLANNING COMMISSION OCTOBER 21, 2003 V. ADJOURNMENT It was moved by Commissioner Jonathan, seconded by Commissioner Finerty, adjourning the meeting by minute motion. Motion carried 5-0. The meeting was adjourned at 11:51 a.m. t 1rl r 1 PHILIP DRELL, ecretary ATTEST: SONIA M. CAMPBELL, Chairperson Palm Desert Planning Commission /mg 67