2_Exhibits A-C - Laserfiche WebLink

which have included a ground floor residential component, which have carefully protected land designated for commercial use. The draft DSP proposes three land use designations that would permit both residential and commercial uses (see Attachments 3 and 4 for the existing and proposed land use maps): • Downtown Commercial district (Downtown Commercial land use designation in the existing Specific Plan) which applies to Main Street and the surrounding areas; • Mixed Use- Downtown (MU-D) district (Public land use designation in the existing Specific Plan) which applies to the existing Civic Center site and former SFPUC property: and • Mixed Use- Transitional (MU-T) district (Office land use designation in the Specific Plan), which applies to the properties on the north side of Old Bernal Avenue and the east side of Peters Avenue. Throughout the Specific Plan update process, the Task Force supported a restrictive approach to residential development in these three land use districts that would prohibit all ground-floor residential uses, with residential only permitted on upper-floors. As such, the draft DSP included language in the land use descriptions for each of these districts; and in Policy LD-P.17, more explicitly prohibiting ground-floor residential. Furthermore, Policy LD-P.18 prohibits street-fronting residential building entries on streets in the Downtown Commercial district. Comments received during the November/December outreach, particularly from members of the development community, and in later written comments from the Pleasanton Downtown Association (PDA) and Chamber of Commerce (Chamber), expressed concern that proposed development standards and restrictions placed on ground-floor residential uses were too stringent, and requested that they be relaxed. As such. staff provided the following options to refine or re-evaluate these policies. • Modifying policy language to discourage, rather than prohibit ground-floor residential, provided that it is located in the rear of the site and not visually prominent from the street; and • If ground-floor residential were to be permitted, staff suggested including an additional requirement for a street fronting commercial spaces to have a minimum depth of 50-feet so as to maintain the commercial character of the street frontage and to avoid "token" retail with a predominantly residential site in the downtown core. The rationale for this recommended change is threefold: 1) it solves for a lack of clarity about how parking for residential uses would be treated (i.e., the location of the garage if only upper-floor residential is permitted): 2) the change reduces the overall concern that prohibiting ground-floor residential may discourage redevelopment/ reinvestment in Page 6 of 15 Page 5 of 15 streets off Main and on upper-stories within the Overlay. Page 4 of 15 s. It was noted the overall building height in PUD's to be 30-feet which may need to be removed if the goal is to allow additional flexibility in PUDs. Public Comments and Questions The Task Force opened up the meeting to the public. Three members from the public provided comments. One comment noted we should maximize value and volume of use we can get on the land of this downtown (MU-D) area. Construction today tends to have higher plate heights and limited this area to 40-feet will only yield two-stories and really restrict any additional height/floors. However, given the right location and design, the Council may want to allow three-stories in some instances. Another comment agrees with the Task Force recommendation in terms of allowing additional heights so the projects can be reviewed on an individual basis. The final comment requested the note about limiting PUDs to 30-feet be stricken from the DSP to allow additional flexibility especially given modern construction. Summary of February 26, 2019 Downtown Specific Plan Update Task Force Meeting Page 6 of 7 c Plan Update Task Force Meeting Page 5 of 7