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The San Ramon Planning Commission is set to continue its debate on a proposed Walgreens in the Dougherty Valley, with developers returning Tuesday with a smaller building design but questions still remaining about parking and other project components.
The updated proposal from Browman Development Co. would add a 12,595-square-foot building with a drive-thru pharmacy to a one-acre lot at the northeast corner of Windemere Parkway and Rockhampton Road, just off Bollinger Canyon Road.
That revised gross floor area is smaller than the proposals presented during the commissioners’ public discussions about the project in September and April.
At the end of the meeting six weeks ago, the commission still had issues with aspects of the project, including a parking shortfall, the architecture of the building’s western facade, lack of landscaping space, delivery truck turning radius on Rockhampton Road, and an overlap between the drive-thru and loading area, according to city associate planner Shinei Tsukamoto.
The developer went back to the drawing board and reduced the building floor area to 12,595 square feet, in part by eliminating a proposed mezzanine-level storage area. The cutback decreased the number of zoning ordinance-required parking spaces to 56 — 12 fewer than Browman’s proposal of 44 parking spots.
“All information and statistics provided thus far appear to suggest that the proposed number of parking spaces (44) should be sufficient for the proposed development,” Tsukamoto wrote in the latest staff report to the commission.
Tsukamoto also noted that the current proposal does not fully resolve the commission’s concerns about enough landscaping area to screen the building from Rockhampton Road, the necessary truck turning radius on Rockhampton, and the conflict between the drive-thru pharmacy and the adjacent loading area for larger delivery trucks.
The property, located at 11440 Windemere Pkwy., is designated for commercial uses such as a pharmacy. The site is surrounded by the Canyon Oaks at Windemere apartment complex, a fire station and the Ambridge townhouse development.
City planning staff recommends the commissioners hear the latest update Tuesday evening, open the public hearing, take citizen testimony and provide feedback to staff and the applicant before considering whether to continue the discussion to a future date or declare their intent to approve or deny the project.
The Walgreens debate is the lead agenda item for the commission’s meeting, set to start at 7 p.m. in the city council chambers at 2222 Camino Ramon.
In other business Tuesday night, the commission will consider a property owner’s request to subdivide an existing 5-acre parcel with three office buildings into three separate parcels with one office building each on Porter Drive between Deerwood Drive and Crow Canyon Road.
The proposal from Deerwood Investors also calls for a rezone of the site from the administrative office zone to limited office.
San Ramon planning staff recommends approval of the rezone, minor subdivision and a minor exception to city zoning rules because one of the new parcels would be 90 feet wide — 10 feet shorter than the minimum width required for the limited office zone.
