Eager for growth, Palo Alto adopts new vision for Ventura

As the Palo Alto City Council concluded on Monday its seven-year planning journey and adopted a new vision for the historically underserved Ventura neighborhood, the community celebration was decidedly muted.

Partly, this was because most of the residents and property owners who had participated in the process had long ago checked out of a planning process that had turned increasingly fractious and frustrating, with every single planning scenario failing to get majority support.

Partly, this was because the journey took a sharp turn at the midway point when the council reached a separate deal with The Sobrato Organization that effectively took the most prominent and promising property in the area — the former cannery building at 340 Portage Ave. that used to house Fry’s Electronics — out of the planning equation.

And partly, it’s because the council’s ability to actually control growth in Ventura had diminished markedly over the course of the planning exercise as new state laws took effect that removed parking requirements and relaxed building heights and density limits on residential projects.

Council members struggled to navigate this shifting landscape and made numerous revisions to the North Ventura Coordinated Area Plan before they voted 6-1, with Lydia Kou dissenting, to adopt the planning document, which will guide growth in a 60-acre section of Ventura bounded by Page Mill Road, Lambert Avenue, El Camino Real and the Caltrain corridor.

The vote concludes a process that began in 2017, when the council agreed that Ventura is ripe for growth and began working on a plan that residents had hoped would bring affordable housing, park space, retail and other community amenities to the neighborhood. After a long series of meetings and workshops, the council had agreed in 2022 to move forward with a scenario that would bring 530 new housing units to the Ventura area, rejecting two other alternatives that called for more growth. The plan also calls for naturalization of Matadero Creek, removal of most parking requirements and increased building density along El Camino and Park Boulevard.

But as the council voted to formally approve the document, the main debate wasn’t over which scenario to choose but on whether the city’s plans will be compatible with new state laws.

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Parking was a key concern. Most of the Ventura planning area lies within half a mile of the California Avenue Caltrain station, which makes it subject to Assembly Bill 2097, a recently passed law that effectively prohibits cities from establishing parking requirements in transit-friendly areas. Some parts, however, fall outside the half-mile radius. While city staff proposed removing all parking requirements from the Ventura planning area, some residents and council members balked at the idea of going beyond state law when it comes to street parking.

Council member Pat Burt was among those who said he would not support extending the provisions of AB 2097 beyond the area in which the law would apply.

“It’s not a refinement, it’s not nuanced, it’s a blunt tool,” Burt said. “I have no idea why we’d even consider extending it outside that area without a policy decision by the council.”

Vice Mayor Ed Lauing, who had worked on the Ventura area plan as a member of the Planning and Transportation Commission before he joined the council, similarly cautioned about going too far when it comes to removing parking requirements. His motion to approve the plan specified that areas outside the half-mile radius from the Caltrain station would remain covered by existing parking requirements.

The Ventura plan also revises height limits for buildings throughout the area, with greater height allowed along El Camino and Park Boulevard. Height limits would range from 30 feet on the single-family residential blocks on Olive and Pepper avenues to 65 feet in the higher density areas. But with the State Density Bonus Law allowing residential developers to get additional height and density, council members conceded that some projects may end up bigger than the plan envisions.

While council members said they were concerned about the impact of the state law on the planning area, Lauing noted that the only way to mitigate that is to reduce the local height and density limits even further. Given the city’s efforts to encourage more housing and receive approval for its Housing Element, neither he nor his colleagues were willing to do that.

Lauing said that he had seen the plan “evolve positively” over the course of the process.

“It’s not perfect but we‘re getting a lot of what we want in housing, we got direction of office transitioning out and great effort on all parts,” Lauing said.

Not everyone shared his view. Some residents who have been involved in the process lamented what they characterized as a lost opportunity. Becky Sanders, moderator of the Ventura Neighborhood Association, had championed a different alternative that called for the city to purchase the property at 340 Portage Ave., build affordable housing on the site and create a community center at a nearby site on Ash Street.

She and others had been critical of the city’s plan with Sobrato, which allows the company to retain commercial use in a portion of the cannery building while also permitting it to demolish another portion of the historic building to make way for a townhouse project. As part of that deal, Sobrato provided to the city 3.5 acres of land within the planning area that council members hope could accommodate a future park and an affordable housing project.

Sanders slammed the proposed NVCAP for removing parking requirements even as it increases height and density limits for new buildings.

“Why is the Ventura neighborhood treated as if the quality of our lives isn’t as valuable as the quality of lives in other neighborhoods?” Sanders asked the council.

While affordable housing was a project goal that all stakeholders had embraced, the final plan will result in a “pile of mixed-use highrises, signaling even more office space without guaranteed community-serving retail and businesses,” Sanders said.

Terry Holzemer, who lives near Ventura and who served on the working group that helped put the plan together, similarly lamented the direction that the plan had taken. The working group’s process, he said, was “either ignored or forgotten about or overlooked” by city staff, he said.

“At most NVCAP meetings we agree that we won’t want more office developments,” Holzemer said. “We agreed that housing is extremely important but not so much as to destroy the nature and character of the surrounding neighborhood.”

One major commercial property that the city hopes will eventually accommodate residential use is 395 Page Mill Road, a site that is owned by Jay Paul that currently houses Cloudera. Currently zoned for general manufacturing, this area along Page Mill is being rezoned for high-density housing, with densities of 61 to 100 dwellings per acre.

Janette Delia, chief operating officer of Jay Paul, objected to this rezoning, which would make the existing office use at 395 Page Mill “non-conforming” under the new zoning. While this would not affect Jay Paul’s current developments, it could jeopardize its ability to get a new tenant if Cloudera were to leave the site or if the building is damaged and needs to be rebuilt.

Under existing law, an applicant has a year to replace a non-conforming use. Failure to do that would require any new project to be residential. Getting a major new commercial tenant, Delia said, could be difficult in Silicon Valley’s cooling real estate climate.

To address the company’s concern, the council agreed to increase the amount of time that a property owner has to find a new tenant to two years before the new zoning requirements would kick in.

Kou, as the sole dissenter, objected to the new parking rules and suggested that they would negatively impact the existing neighborhood. She also said that she has no confidence in the proposed programs to limit traffic by encouraging other modes of transportation.

“There’s going to be an effect in the neighborhood for sure with parking as well as cut-through traffic,” Kou said.

Gennady Sheyner Staff Writer, Palo Alto Weekly / PaloAltoOnline.com

Gennady Sheyner covers local and regional politics, housing, transportation and other topics for the Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto Online and their sister publications. He has won awards for his coverage. More by Gennady Sheyner

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This is where coordinated and piecemeal meet and it all gets fractured. By allowing Sobrato to re-zone a ripe for (and direly needed) residential zone at 15 acre Fry’s made way for corporate power to rule the day. Note: By the way commercial overlay zones do not fall within the same city ordinances as all residential. The piece meal approach is wrong and patch-work and spotty and lacks cohesive vision. It’s been the story of the housing hole for decades in Palo Alto. Why can a expressway like Oregon get cut through the center of the city 60 years ago no problem, removing homes along the way? Today everything so shortsighted: “You get this if we get that” which stymies fruitful plans and resident wishes for more housing. The Ventura result shows me that Libertarians in power are the winner takes all. The CC are hamstrung with private enterprise, capitalistic schemes. Prop 13 was only the beginning of the downfall and the rise to power, billionaire interests — which include Stanford and SRP. What is so hypocritical are those same “voices” desiring the myth of the small town “feel” of Palo Alto.

Thank you for your comment. This is a very sad turn of events. The whole thing felt staged. They raced through a complicated, confusing and often contradictory ordinance. I mean who put greased lightning on the dais last night? They voted in favor of something nary a single person in the room including staff understood in toto. Staff gave contradictory and misleading answers to important questions. And I guess because maybe they were exhausted the mumbled and were asked to repeat the answers. It’s taken 7 years so why not continue the item so that the council can pick apart and understand the true implications of what they voted for? Instead in uncharacteristic style, the Vice Mayor made a motion pretty much straight out of the gate. No one seconded it for an age and then Mayor Stone seconded it like it was some bad fish. And then they tossed a few amendments in there faster than anything with little discussion. We need brave leadership in 2024 folks. Let’s get to the polls and find leaders that will lead rather than rubberstamp what is put before them by rogue city staff locked up in what used to be our City Hall.

Becky Saunders was particularly effective in her opposing statements, as was Jeff Levinsky speaking for a group where he logically and sensibly noted that the plans ignored that parking would ALSO be removed on nearby El Camino and how absurd it was to ignore that since cars would be circling everywhere trying to find parking. At the same time City Manager Shikada praised the young woman from the “Planning” Department for making her first ever presentation to CC which ignored the relationship between parking restrictions on ECR and Ventura. This is the type of, er, illogical tunnel vision that ignores how nearby projects impact each other as is the case of Casti construction disrupting Embarcadero traffic while closing Churchill will dump 10,000 more cars a day onto Embarcadero. But I guess that’s why our city “leaders” get paid the huge bucks that keep pushing up our utility rates to unsustainable levels. (Speaking of utilities, notice how many people are getting no response from complaints to CPAU for MONTHS and how, as Bob Moss noted last night, people can’t even get into City Hall to deliver their paperwork in person thanks to the City Manager’s new dictates banning taxpayers who just 10 years ago funded that zipppy new interactive “Wayfinding” system.)

Thank you for your comment of support. November is right around the corner. Hope we can all understand the candidates and what they stand for and who is backing them.

In future I won’t vote for or support in any way the council members who ran rough shod over the community at the behest of Sobrato and his pals at city hall. The question has never been answered as to who at city hall was responsible for quietly removing the 30 year sunset clause zoning (enacted around 1990) for the entire site to become future housing just as it was going to come into effect. Suddenly handing Sobrato a huge windfall, presumably having paid for a housing only site which now thanks to his palls at city hall could also include more lucrative new office construction. For those who do not know, and as I understand, a “Sunset Clause” is the legally required time period after a property is downzoned in value before the new zoning comes into effect. This delay is to allow a property owner time to recoup their investment. In this case Palo Alto gave the Fry’s site owner 30 years notice because future housing use is less profitable than developing new offices.

Thank you for this comment! YES! The far-sighted Council of the 1990s determined that we would need more housing and that the Cannery site would be perfect for housing and decreed it so. And then lo and behold someone in the backroom did the Soupy Sales Shuffle, and we have this debacle of today. Even if we extended life to Fry’s during the tech heyday, was that extension in perpetuity? No sunset on the extension? And now we have more office space than ever, further tanking our jobs/housing imbalance. We used to talk about halting office development until we could catch up. So much empty rhetoric. What’s wrong with turning a profit at the public’s expense? Everything.

The City Council failed to set a vision. They let committee after committee go off in completely separate directions without taking into account the imminent imperative of the Housing Element and builder’s remedy. In the meantime, they made piecemeal decisions as with Sobrato that vastly diminished the value of the plan.

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