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Specific Plan, the O district is likely to evolve to something else. So the kind of design that Tim and Mike are putting forward tonight really is flexible. And so if it evolves to a retail use in the future or to an office, I think it's going to be a pleasant space for this corner. What we're trying to do is get a great design for a corner space that is flexible. Commissioner Balch: Okay, so I apologize then because the staff report talks how they would like offices on the ground floor of all four buildings. Is that still where staff is at? Weinstein: It's a judgment call, right? I think staff's default is to make this project as consistent as possible with the Office district, keeping in mind what Gerry just said, which is that it is possible that the Office district will evolve in the future and that the office space might be better used as retail space. But, we're sort of employing the same principle that we used on the Spring Street project, right? That was a C -C district project which calls for, if you're a strict constructionist of the Downtown Specific Plan, it calls for all ground floor retail space on the Spring Street side. We realized on that site that covering that entire ground floor space with retail was not really practical. It was a really long, narrow lot. So the compromise we came up with was a strong commercial presence right on Spring Street and then whatever you wanted to do in terms of residential on the back and on the upper floors, so we're trying to employ that same principle here on this site. So our suggestion in talking with the applicant earlier was to have the street - fronting buildings have a strong office or maybe retail presence and then do whatever housing you want in the back buildings that are not actually on the streets. So we were trying to employ that same principle that we used on Spring Street to this site to be consistent with the Specific Plan. Commissioner Balch: So slightly different that the written staff report Weinstein: Again, this is a workshop and we're presenting the project that was proposed but we try to steer applicants to do projects that are consistent with the Specific Plan. Commissioner Balch: Okay, thank you. Commissioner Nagler: Just to follow up, and sort of come down to it, the conversation between staff and the applicant has really turned on the ground floor of Residence 1 which is the ground floor of the residence on the street on Old Bernal and the amount of parking. There is some discussion about the materials and architecture and such, but the discussion of whether it can sort of shoehorn into the current designation or with a slight change of policy is really about the ground floor and its proximity to the street. Weinstein: Yes, that's right. That's the gist of our conversations with the applicant. I do want to add that on the staff level at least, there's a lot to like about this project. There are a lot of things we really like about it. The architecture is something we like and the applicant has worked really hard with his design team on adjusting the architecture and making it even better. We like the fact that there's a mixture of residential units on the site, really small studio units, plus single family is great. So I don't want to understate the good things about the project as well, but we're just sort of debating internally how much residential should be on this site. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, May 25, 2016 Page 14 of 28