01 8-27-2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

of development will assist the City in the future in its housing assignments and in preparation of its Housing Element. Vice Mayor Thorne said the plans outlined in the staff report are very aggressive, the City also has some very important priorities like Staples Ranch and completion of the General Plan, and he questioned how staff felt about fitting all of the work into their schedule and having it completed in a timely manner. City Manager Fialho said public participation and quality would obviously drive the outcome of this planning effort, and from his perspective, the Council's direction to date is completion of the General Plan Update and staff is moving towards putting its resources there. Staff anticipates bringing that forward sometime in January/March 2009. Tracking equally with that is the Staples Ranch project, the EIR process was just completed, and staff is close to finishing off the specific plan amendment and hopefully will bring it to the Planning Commission by the end of the year with the entitlement process occurring with the Council in early 2009. Councilmember McGovern said she believed this was an extremely complex issue to try and make decisions about it tonight. She said the business park has a development plan, development agreement, design guidelines, and site plan criteria, all of which she has not seen. She questioned whether or not the Planning Commission has reviewed them lately. Mr. Iserson said the documents have been in effect for a long time, they have not been changed for a long time, when they have a project in Hacienda that addresses those documents, staff tries to cite the applicable sections and requirements from the PUD and design guidelines, but a comprehensive view has not yet been brought forward. Councilmember McGovern voiced concerns also over the many market, opportunities, and traffic reports done on the area which have not be received by the Planning Commission or Council.. She felt this was a very big step to take without having a full understanding of where the park is today. She was not sure what FAR was assigned to any of the parcels. She confirmed Hacienda was designated currently as a business park, that there were sites within the park designated for retail, office, R&D, and for residential, and there is a zone that incorporates office and industrial and commercial within certain sites. She felt the business park designation could be left as is, and if TOD was to be done in certain areas, the City could designate some parcels for TOD, and therefore, the entire park did not need to be made a mixed use. She questioned and confirmed that each designation has an FAR maximum, which would need to be looked at within the design guidelines on aparcel-by-parcel basis. Councilmember McGovern questioned where the 1,271 unit alternative came from, and City Manager Fialho said the Council was given three options to consider before embarking on the EIR process. A majority of the Council expressed interest in the lower dense option; or the preferred option, and directed staff to analyze this as the preferred land use option in the General Plan at 333 units. But the Council also wanted to study the impact of a couple of other options. The extreme option was 1200 units. Therefore, in the EIR document, it will show an alternative that includes 1200 units in the business park, but it will not be reflected as the preferred plan. Councilmember McGovern said she read there is 1 million square feet of development available to Hacienda currently, and Mr. Iserson said if the residential development is included, this would leave 1 million remaining, and adding in commercial and office would total about 2 million. She confirmed what the Council was therefore looking at was 1,271 units, even though it is the extreme. Mr. Iserson said they are considering this in light of the Hacienda stakeholders' desires to maximize units and of the City's perspective in what a TOD development would look like. CC/PC Joint Workshop Minutes 7 August 27, 2008