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ROLL CALL VOTE: AYES: Commissioners Blank, Narum, O'Connor, Olson, and Pearce. NOES: None. ABSTAIN: None. RECUSED: None. ABSENT: Commissioner Fox. The motion passed. THE PUBLIC HEARING WAS OPENED. Gerald Hodnefield, appellant, presented photos of the parking lot immediately adjacent to his building and added that it was built by the same contractor at the same time. He submitted several letters written by his tenants. He noted that the Code appeared to indicate that the building had common owners when in fact he was the only owner. In addition, they did not share parking with the adj acent landowner. He noted that he also owned four other buildings in the same business park and that he was one of the five founders of Devcon Construction Company, which was started approximately 35 years ago. He noted that since that time, he has developed, owned, and managed over 15 million square feet of office and commercial space in the greater Bay Area. He noted that he had grappled with a wide variety of real estate management issues and added that parking issues were common. He noted that there was some confusion with respect to the application put in by Peter Shutts because he did not realize that there was a parking allocation problem. When he applied for a parking shelter, he had intended to shelter his car from the summer heat and to ensure he had a parking space to return to when he left the lot to visit a tenant. He noted that he had always intended to allocate reserved parking for his own use and would not have spent $40,000 for a parking shelter that he would not be able to use. Mr. Hodnefield noted that nearly all the buildings in the Valley Business Park were designed for small tenants, including mini-contractors, suppliers, and subcontractors. Over the years, many of the buildings that did have adequate parking for those uses had also used the parking spaces for fenced construction yards, parking of large storage containers, recreational vehicles, trailers, inoperative motor vehicles, and construction equipment. He noted that those uses had taken up much of the existing parking. Most of the buildings had parking ratios of two to three cars per 1,000 square feet of building area, which was fairly common for buildings used by contractors and for storage. However, that parking ratio was not adequate for office uses. He noted that some of the uses had metamorphosed into schools, service organizations, and businesses with more employees. He noted that his building had afour-car-per-1,000-square-foot-building ratio, which was generally adequate except for one tenant who used more than his share of parking; he planned to discuss that situation with him and added that the rest of the tenants adhered to their parking quota. He noted that one tenant, who owned a tutoring service, only used her spaces after hours. He noted that it was very frustrating to pay more rent for an office, only to find out that there still was no place to park. PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, February 13, 2008 Page 38 of 42