11 ATTACHMENT 8 - Laserfiche WebLink

In response to Commissioner Fox's inquiring regarding whether Ms. Mundie reviewed what was requested at the February scoping session, Ms. Mundie replied that she was present at the scoping session and had a list of all the points of view that people raised at that scoping session. She stated that she went out with staff and looked at the site from all of those points of view and also studied them all, using the terrain model. Some of them could not be seen from distant locations because of intervening topography, which is actually fairly common, especially at a higher elevation to begin with, because there will be other hills and ridges between you and this site. She indicated that it was fairly difficult to find distant locations from which substantial parts of the site are readily visible or on which individual landscape or built elements could be very easily distinguished from this setting in which they were. The sites that seemed most useful were then reviewed both by themselves and by staff and by the applicants' representatives, and it was a consultative process to determine which ones seemed to be the most useful for the environmental analysis. The sites chosen were those from which the most could be seen. Commissioner Fox inquired if the Bernal Property was one of the Downtown sites. Ms. Mundie said yes. Ms. Mundie continued that this process gives a computer map based upon all the geometrical points determined by topography. The computer map is then registered to the photographs of the site, and then the landscaping and things that are associated with the project are placed on it. Because the project is a custom home project and does not have any buildings designed yet, the project's design guidelines which were developed by the applicant are put to use. However, only the mandatory sections of the design guidelines in determining the shape, the size, and the footprint of the buildings that would actually be placed into the model for the purposes of the visual analysis are used so as not to misstate or unrealistically put any buildings on a site in a way in which they were unlikely to be actually placed when the real project comes forward. Ms. Mundie noted that staff had emphasized the importance of considering the fact that landscaping is very hard to see in the very first years of the project because it either has not been placed yet or it has not grown into anything yet. So, in addition to looking at the existing view of the site, we were to look at the project in Year 0, which means it has just been constructed, and there is basically no landscaping there and looks pretty raw; five years after construction, in which case you can normally see some landscaping, but it is not very substantial yet; and then, 15 years out, when a substantial amount of the landscaping, including the mitigation trees that the applicant will be planting, will have reached enough maturity to get a better impression of what the finished project will actually look like after a number of years have passed. Ms. Mundie then showed overhead slides of the southern edge of Pleasanton Ridge taken from Grey Eagle Court. She first described the existing view; followed by one right after construction with landscaping at zero years and a few houses; then one after five years where there has been some screening as the vegetation is in place and is beginning to grow; and finally one after 15 years where there is a substantial amount of vegetation and most of the EXCERPTS: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, July 12, 2006 Page 6 of 21