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The San Ramon Planning Commission is set to hold the third public hearing on a proposed amendment that would reduce housing density limits around western Crow Canyon Road on Tuesday night.
This is the last public hearing scheduled for the Planning Commission, and at this special meeting, commissioners will consider whether to recommend that the City Council approve the density-reduction proposal — as supported by city planning staff.
If four or more commissioners vote to follow the staff recommendation, the City Council will consider officially approving the amendment at an unspecified future date. The proposal would need support from four-fifths of the council.
The proposed amendment would reduce the maximum number of dwelling units per acre within the Crow Canyon Specific Plan (CCSP), an area that covers 130 acres and is bounded by the San Ramon city limit line to the north, Interstate 680 to the east, Crow Canyon Road to the south and the San Ramon city limit line to the west.
Right now, the residential density range for the area is a minimum of 22 dwelling units and a maximum of 50 dwelling units per acre, but the amendment would reduce that to 22-35 units per acre.
The density reduction idea came about, according to acting division manager Lauren Barr, because the city had been receiving a large number of conceptual review applications in the CCSP with a higher density than was anticipated due in part to California’s density bonus law, which allows developers to construct a higher project density in exchange for designating a certain percentage of their units as affordable.
“Over the past 12 months, the city has received several inquiries and processed several conceptual review applications for potential projects in the CCSP area,” Barr wrote in a previous staff report. “These project concepts, with the inclusion of density bonus allowed by state law, reflected a significantly higher density than was originally anticipated.”
Of the 130 acres in the CCSP, 41 can be used for housing development, though none are specifically designated as residential.
Regardless of the density reduction, if the amendment is passed, the unit cap on the entire CCSP area would remain constant at 735 units. Meaning that the amendment essentially affects how dwelling units are dispersed throughout the 41 acres, limiting the density on individual parcels and developments.
During the second public hearing — a joint meeting with the Planning Commission and City Council — two members of the public voiced support for the reduction.
Resident Jim Blickenstaff praised city officials for drawing up the amendment, and taking into account residents’ “quality of life.”
“Reducing that range is an appropriate reaction to state pressures,” he said.
However, three stakeholders from the Golden Skate apartments, which has a pending development application at 2701 Hoover Drive, spoke out against the amendment and asked officials to exempt their project from the new limits, should it pass.
“We think (this) is a way of bypassing the state density bonus law, and we use that as a critical way of subsidizing the affordable, by-the-market rate,” developer Blake Peters said. “So that being said, we’re certainly against it, overall and as a bad precedent for other cities. For us, this project is all the way through the planning process at this point. We’d have to scrap the entire project, and we couldn’t do it as an 80-20 (20% affordable), if at this point we were down-zoned.”
Local housing advocates also expressed concerns about the reduction, citing the Bay Area housing crisis, and suggesting that San Ramon is trying to sidestep state-mandated density bonuses.
“At a time of pressing need for every community in the Bay Area to increase the supply of housing, and in particular housing for very low, low and moderate income families, reducing allowable densities will make development more difficult and constrain our ability to meet local and regional housing needs,” wrote Jeffrey P. Levin, policy director of East Bay Housing Organizations, in a letter to San Ramon council members and commissioners.
Levin goes on to critique the city for not making a strong enough effort to supply adequate affordable housing, considering that the city’s stated goal is for 25% of new housing units to be affordable to very low, low and moderate income households.
“This is a very modest goal, particularly in light of the fact that the City’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation for the 2015-2023 planning period calls for 76% of new housing to be affordable to very low, low and moderate income, and just 24% affordable to above moderate income,” Levin said.
The meeting is scheduled to begin 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Council Chamber in the San Ramon City Hall, 7000 Bollinger Canyon Road.
In other business
* In another special meeting scheduled to begin immediately after the Crow Canyon density public hearing, the Planning Commission will hold a second study session regarding three retail development alternatives compiled by First Carbon Solutions and Bay Area Economics.
“Retail is a key quality of life amenity for both residents and employees in San Ramon, and as such, it is a critical factor for successful economic development,” wrote Andrew Hill, project manager at FirstCarbon Solutions, in a staff report. “The retail sector, however, has changed significantly over the past few years and the City now faces competitive pressures to retain and attract retailers.”
This is the second study session to be held on this topic, following a retail analysis report that was conducted in February, a focus group consulted in May to talk strategies and a first study session held in June to talk over preliminary concepts.
The retail analysis report found that considering San Ramon’s affluence and high levels of educational attainment, the city could support between 579,000 and 1.157 million square feet of additional retail space over the next 20 years. However, at the moment, the city’s retail sector is underdeveloped, with local residents going elsewhere for shopping.
Additionally, the report stated, the retail landscape is changing, now shifting to online shopping, reducing the need for physical retail space.
The first alternative would focus on policy changes to remove barriers to retail growth, especially honing in on parking optimization and attracting shoppers from the nearby freeway.
The second alternative would be to promote retail in the most visible and accessible locations. To do this would involve changing zoning designations and focusing on neighborhood daily needs, in order to support retail offerings at City Center.
And the final alternative would be to focus retail where it’s best-performing. This would involve increasing residents and employees in the core of the city, and reducing retail at other locations.
This meeting is set to begin after the density discussion, no sooner than 7:30 p.m., in the EOC Meeting Room at City Hall.
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BUILD, BUILD,BUILD
and become the best crammed area in the Bay Area
Less pro-thinking except to look for bigger tax base, intentionally or not, which will not address the over crowdedness of shops, heavy traffic jams, more crowding of the best school district in the area; more jammed school schedules leading to heavy criticism of schools.
All for what?
Rubber stamping the advice of city “thinkers”?
“Thinkers” propose, council accepts, citizens suffer!!!!
> All for what?
I’m not sure you appreciate how dire things have gotten for California renters in the last few years. A third of California renters pay more than half their salary in rent. Your kids (if you have them), your kids teachers, your younger employees are all struggling with the amount they have to pay to their landlord every month. Adding more apartments will reduce the heavy competition for existing apartments and help people afford to get by every month.
I’m a renter who grew up in Alamo, and I live in the Bay Area. Homeowners are protected from large price increases via mortgages and Prop 13; renters get no such protections against rising rents. I’m going to pay $40,000 this year, roughly the equivalent of someone with a $800,000 mortgage, and not get any equity in my apartment. I don’t know a single person I went to middle school with who can afford to buy a home in the area, or who even lives in Alamo. Let alone the teachers and police officers and city employees.
We desperately need more housing throughout the Bay Area, and the state density bonuses were designed to help produce more housing. Downzoning is a bad idea.
> more crowding of the best school district in the area
This sounds like exactly what we should do: put more kids in the best schools, so they have a better chance to get a great education. The SR school district is doing a good thing and should get a chance to bring their winning formula to more students.
> more jammed school schedules leading to heavy criticism of schools.
For what it’s worth, a 1999 law made it illegal to consider school insufficiency when making land use decisions.
> citizens suffer!!!!
Since 2010, Contra Costa County has added 64,000 new jobs and only 9,500 new housing units. As a result rents have skyrocketed. A one bedroom apartment in SR has gone from $1250 to $2149 in seven years: https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-ramon-ca-rent-trends/. We need more housing to match the jobs we’ve added – there literally aren’t enough beds for everyone so the prices get bid up sky high.
In any event, I’d rather have a traffic crisis or a school crisis than to have a housing crisis, a third of renters paying half their salary to their landlords, a home remaining a pipe dream for many young workers.