So the photo at the top of this article: that's University Avenue. Connects right to Stanford University. Second busiest station in the @Caltrain system.
Seems like a good place for urban infill. Replacing some of those 1 story buildings with 5?
Or so you'd think?
(Thread.)
High-profile California housing legislation aims to allow new mid-rise apartments near transit. But it also would allow for apartments in broad swaths of wealthy communities across the state — whether they’re near rail or not. My #SB50 take from Palo Alto. latimes.com/politics/la-pol-…
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The city council had an effort last year to change zoning laws to encourage more housing. They made some tweaks in the right direction, but they really don't do much. (The law goes into effect May 2. Full text at cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/f… .)
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One of the things they wanted to do was try to change the tradeoffs developers face when building office vs housing. But when offices rent for $10/ft²/month and apartments rent for $4-$5/ft²/month, that's hard. They didn't do enough. And they also made things a lot worse.
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See, downtown, along University avenue, is supposed to be a pedestrian friendly area. So curb cuts aren't allowed along University avenue. This is sensible. (It was previously unofficial policy enforced during discretionary review; now it's defined as an objective standard.)
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There's also an in-lieu parking program. This means that if the zoning code specifies that a development requires 17 parking spaces, instead of building 17 parking spaces, the developer can pay about $70,000 per space ($1.2 million here) into a fund to build parking garages.
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But the in-lieu parking program applied only to non-residential development. Apartments would still need to build parking, even if parking entrances or forbidden or the lots are two small to fit a parking lot.
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So to remove an incentive to choose office over housing, there was a proposal to allow residential development to participate in the in-lieu parking program.
But this was too scary for Palo Alto. There might be "underparked" apartment buildings!
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During this suspension, it's effectively not possible to build *anything* taller than one story on most lots on University Avenue, since unless you can find a non-residential non-office use for the upper stories, you'd have to provide parking...
Apr 22, 2019 · 6:05 PM UTC
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... and that's only possible if the lot is physically large enough to provide underground parking without destroying the entire ground floor retail space (most aren't) *and* there's street access from the side or the rear (remember, no curb cuts allowed along University).
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So the suspension of the in-lieu parking program for a year nearly bans infill development along University Avenue for that year.
While @adrianfine tried to amend this away (see youtube.com/xKgC0qRXX2s?t=10488)... it somehow ended up back in the ordinance (not sure how).
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So one of the best locations for infill development on the peninsula, next to Stanford and to the second busiest station on Caltrain, is effectively limited to single-story development for the next year.
This, when infill is needed to reduce sprawl and greenhouse gas emissions.
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