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The planned senior housing project on El Pintado Road in Danville is set to proceed with construction following the denial of two appeals from neighboring residents and dozens of public comments at the most recent Town Council meeting.
After more than three hours of discussion at their final meeting of the year last Tuesday, the council voted unanimously to uphold the Planning Commission’s previous approval of the El Pintado Senior Residences project last month, thereby rejecting the two appeals.
While the council ultimately sided with the developer in denying the requests to reconsider the Planning Commission’s approval of the project, they said they were sympathetic to the dozens of public comments that came on the heels of presentations from the applicant for the project and its appellants, with discussion making up a majority of the nearly four and a half hour long meeting that night.
“I want to thank everybody for coming tonight, for giving us your opinion,” Councilmember Robert Storer said ahead of that evening’s vote to deny the appeals. “We really value it. I wish we could do something different, but as you’ve heard, the state is on us and every other city and town in California. It is what it is.”
Betty Egbert was among the appellants and neighboring residents opposing the project at last week’s meeting. She said she is a longtime resident of a property adjacent to the site in question at 425 El Pintado Road.
“I am 92 years old,” Egbert wrote in a letter submitted to the council, which was read by her daughter. “I was 18 years old when my husband and I built my home in 1950 on this property. It was part of a larger piece of land belonging to my husband’s parents. Ultimately, my in-laws lost their home through eminent domain when Hwy 680 was constructed through their property. Now, THIS project that is proposed, is being built on THEIR property that was taken away from them.”
Some of Egbert’s chief concerns are the planned removal of the redwood trees she currently has a view of from her home in order to make way for the four-story, 99-unit housing project for residents 55 and up.
“Currently, I have views of the surrounding hills and Las Trampas Ridge and sometimes on a clear day even the Livermore Mountains,” Egbert wrote. “If this project is constructed, at its proposed height of four (really five) stories, I will lose all of that. I will have a monster building looming over me, with windows from multiple units and stories looking directly into my home.”
Egbert and the other appellants also criticized the analysis in the transportation impact report for the project that they said characterized the project as an assisted living facility with staff on site, despite it being intended for residential purposes only for people over the age of 55. They also suggested it would not be possible to ensure that people under 55 don’t live in the residences, even if they are deed-restricted to buyers over that age.Â
In the council’s discussion that evening, staff confirmed that the units would be deed-restricted to people 55 and older, but added that it would be possible for them to have younger people living in the units, such as teenage children living with their parents there, or a spouse who is younger than the unit’s owner.Â
When asked what would happen in other cases, such as the latter if the owner were to die and their spouse were to inherit the unit, they said the answer was unclear.
“The Transportation Impact Study and Parking Analysis need to reflect that this project may, in fact, be standard market housing and the corresponding car trips per unit need to be factored in,” Egbert wrote.
Egbert acknowledged that the Town Council is limited in their ability to deny new housing projects in the face of current state affordable housing laws, but asked them to “hold this developer to the highest standards allowed by law.”
However, this was already primarily the case, according to the council, staff, and developers themselves.
“I built this to the minimum density – I really, really want that to come through tonight, because as a developer, I have a huge incentive financially to put a fifth floor on this building and build to my maximum density, which is 95% of applications that are seen in the state of California,” said Jeff Stone, CEO of Diamond Construction Inc. the developers for the project in question and several others on El Pintado Road. “The reason is math. The reason is residual land value to me if I build more density and height through the state process makes it more financially feasible.”Â
The 3.17-acre site is currently under a high density zoning designation that calls for 30 to 35 units per acre, putting the 99-unit senior condominium project below the 111 units that would be allowed for the site under that formula.
“But what we went through with staff for over nine months going back and forth in the project is of serious empathy for the community, so that we could design this in a way that was as palatable as possible,” Stone continued. “And I totally understand that this feels unpalatable for what the current use is. But through significant effort, resources, and thoughtfulness and the community outreach, which might or might not have landed in the way that we could have ultimately taken it, we’re building this building to minimum density with a site that’s minimum 30, maximum 35.”
Stone added that this is in contrast with the approach many developers would have taken, particularly in areas without the same level of concern over new housing developments.
“If a commodity developer that doesn’t care about the community, that only cares about shareholders in New York, that needs to build to maximum density, they would be in here with an application that would be at least six stories tall, you would not see the natural materials on this building, they would not care about whether there’s undulations in architecture in trees around the surrounding neighborhood, and they wouldn’t actually take it as a passion project to do the best that they possibly can,” Stone said.
While it was his first regular Town Council meeting at the dais after being sworn in to office earlier this month, newly-elected councilmember Mark Belotz noted that he was already familiar with the project due to his work on the town’s Design Review Board, and echoed Stone’s characterization of a thoughtful and community oriented planning process that had already incorporated the concerns of Egbert, her husband Dan, and the other appellants.
“For the people that don’t know I was on the Design Review Board that approved this building, and I was on Betty’s front porch with Dan. looking out at the trees and looking to see how tall this building was going to be,” Belotz said. “So I appreciate all the changes you’ve made. Again do I want that building there, not particularly. but I think it’s going to be a beautiful building. I think things are in the end going to work out really well so thank you very much.”
Councilmember Newell Arnerich said he had also visited the Egberts’ front porch, and that he was deeply sympathetic to their concerns, but noted that the site could have been home to a far less desirable project than the one in the works – such as a larger building currently set to go up and obstruct the view from his own single-story home.
“The quality looks more like Danville – but it’s a big building there’s no question about that,” Arnerich said. “Thank you though for breaking it up – the building next to me is one massive building that’s 60% bigger and it’s not broken up.”
Arnerich said that while he appreciated the work developers and the Design Review Board did to make the project amenable to the town’s standards, the underlying issue was a political one that would not be solved without “different people at the state legislature.”
“When we say you fight it, we have fought it – there is nothing we can do,” Arnerich said. “We are a subsidiary of the state, and they actually threatened if you don’t do this as, our City attorney Rob (Ewing) said you know go through the process where automatically all these agreed to conditions disappear, and if they think we’re going to do this again they can decertify us a city.”
Councilmember Karen Stepper said that while she was not pleased about the prospect of large housing projects in the town that are currently required in order to comply with state law, Danville has been lucky to have numerous projects underway from developers that have incorporated feedback from the community and local officials.
“We are so fortunate that so many people who build in Danville live in Danville, or they live in the San Ramon Valley and they understand what expectations have been, or at least were heretofore when we weren’t completely governed by the state, and it makes a huge difference because they try so hard,” Stepper said.
While the council ultimately voted unanimously to reject the appeals and uphold the planning commission’s approval of the project, they included a number of changes in the conditions of approval aimed at responding to requests from Egbert, including adjusting the maximum width in roads and parking lots to accommodate additional traffic, and the installation of trees, fencing, and an irrigation system to make up for the planned tree removals.
