The Planning and Transportation Commission will be holding a special meting on the proposal from the Palo Alto Housing Corporation to rezone the Maybell-Clemo project site to ‘Planned Community’ (PC).
When: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 @ 6:00 PM Where: City Council Chambers
You can download the agenda for the Planning and Transportation Commission meeting here: May22_Special meeting agenda with embeded links. The report has embedded links to the Staff report and to the PAHC submittals that I have pulled out and listed below along with some text from the document.
Public Hearing: “567-595 Maybell Avenue [12PLN-00453]: Request by Candice Gonzalez on behalf of Palo Alto Housing Corporation, for Planning and Transportation Commission review and recommendation to Council regarding a new Planned Community (PC) zone district and Comprehensive Plan land use designation amendment to allow a 15 single family home and a 60 unit affordable rental project for seniors on parcels having a combined area of 107,392 square feet and zoned R-2 and RM-15. Environmental Assessment: An Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration have been prepared.” ” Staff recommends that the Planning and Transportation Commission recommend that the City Council approve:
The Initial Study and Mitigated Negative Declaration (Attachment K);
A Resolution amending the Comprehensive Plan designation for a portion of the site from Multifamily to Single Family (Attachment B);
A Planned Community ordinance rezoning (Attachment A); with Conditions of Approval (Attachment D) of the subject property from RM-15 and R-2 for a 15 unit single family and a 60 unit multifamily affordable rental project for seniors, including two concessions for providing affordable rental units under California Government Code 65915.”
City Planner Tim Wong released two City staff documents pertaining to the proposed Maybell Homes and Clemo Senior Housing project.
The first document is the ‘Mitigated Negative Declaration” for the environmental review. The second is a revised Traffic Study. You can download them at the links below.
Traffic issues are discussed in this post. If you have comments about the traffic study or traffic issues in the environmental review, contact Rafael Ruis, the City staff traffic engineer working on this project.
His number is 329-2305.
His email address is <Rafael.Rius@CityofPaloAlto.org>
1) Maybell-Clemo Mitigated Negative Declaration: Environmental Review. The review period ends May 30th. This document, as does the updated Traffic Report, assumes as a baseline that the project only has a entrance/exit via the Clemo driveway. This report identifies this as an issue and suggests ‘mitigation’ measures that need to be adopted.
On page 44..
“Potential Impacts: If the Clemo Avenue driveway is the only access to the site and the access barriers on Clemo are not relocated, the stop-controlled Clemo Avenue approach at Arastradero Road would incur a substantial increase in delay and deterioration in the level of service during the AM peak hour. This would result in a potential significant effect on traffic operations at this intersection. If the access easement is obtained and there is site access from both Clemo and Maybell Avenues, there would be no significant adverse traffic impacts expected from the project. Or alternatively, if the Clemo barrier could be relocated east of the project driveway so that all project trips would access Clemo Avenue via Maybell Avenue, there would be no significant adverse traffic impacts expected from the project.
Mitigation Measures:
In order to ensure that there are no adverse impacts to traffic circulation, one of the following mitigation measures shall be required.
The project sponsor shall obtain an access easement through the adjacent Arastradero Park Apartment Complex to connect the site access aisle to the existing driveway for APAC on Maybell Avenue.
If an access easement cannot be obtained and access is from a single driveway on Clemo Avenue, the access barriers on Clemo Avenue shall be reolocated from the intersection of Maybell Avenue to east of the project driveway on Clemo Avenue.”
2) The revised traffic study, Maybell Traffic Report 042313 , now uses as a baseline only the entrance/exit on Clemo, which matches the approach taken in the Environmental Review.
Here are some questions I asked Tim Wong about the revised study and (in red) is his response.
1. The revised proposal uses only the Clemo access and that the other two (Arastadero easement, Clemo barrier move) are options that the City requested the consultant to study. Is this correct? Can you tell me if there anything new, any new data ? Yes, the change in the traffic study was to reflect the Clemo via Arastradero access. There were some additional comments to the Existing Site Observations (Pg. 8), Existing Plus Project Conditions Intersection Analysis (pg. 10) and Neighborhood Traffic Volume (Pg. 23). But no new data was introduced.
2. From what I can see, there is still no consideration in the study of the amount of pedestrian and bicycle traffic, nor any reference to Safe Routes to School maps. I understand, from the consultant’s presentation at the meeting last week, this is a formulaic approach, it answers some questions. In my mind, as a document that ought to provide insight and consideration of neighborhood concerns, particularly safety in a neighborhood with so many schools and so many bicyclists and young pedestrians, it does not examine those issues and so it does not satisfy nor respond to some of the community’s critical questions. The impacts of the proposed project on pedestrian and bicycle circulation were reviewed. However, based on the size of the project and the amount of traffic generated by the project, the impacts on pedestrian and bicycle traffic were determined to be less than significant. If you would like to discuss this in greater detail, you can also contact Rafael Rius, Traffic Engineer. His number is 329-2305.
The Palo Alto Housing Corporation, developer of the Maybell Homes and Senior Housing Project at the corner of Maybell and Clemo, commissioned a Traffic Study that was submitted to the City’s Planning Department in February. The traffic study was made public only recently following a request by BPA President Lynnie Melena. Click on the link to download the Maybell Clemo project Traffic Study.
The study reveals that the developer, with input from the City, has broadened the possibilities for entrance/exit by cars from what they presented at the community meetings last September. The consequence of this Traffic Study is that there is now a clear preference for traffic to/from the site to use Maybell and not Arastradero, as had been proposed initially.
The only entrance/exit proposed at the community meeting was on Clemo, and with the existing barriers at the end of Clemo near Maybell, all the traffic created by the site would then flow to/from Arastradero (The traffic study has no figures of the site itself with traffic directions so I have created them using their site plan on which I superimposed arrows: Maybell runs vertically on the left, Clemo runs horizontally at the bottom).
Traffic exit/enter Clemo to/from Arastradero
In a second proposal in this Traffic Study, which is the one preferred by the developer, the project would be served by two driveways—one driveway on Clemo Avenue and a second via an access easement through the adjacent Arastradero Park Apartment Complex (a property that is also owned by the Palo Alto Housing Corporation) to the north that would connect to an existing driveway on Maybell Avenue.
Traffic enter/exit via easement to Apartment driveway to/from Maybell and Clemo to/from Arastradero
Each of these proposals has two scenarios. The second scenario – suggested by the City of Palo Alto, according to the Traffic Study – is to relocate the barrier on Clemo Avenue from its existing location near Maybell Avenue to immediately east of the proposed project site driveway on Clemo. As a result, this would block all traffic to/from Arastradero and all traffic generated by the project would flow to/from Maybell.
All traffic enters/exits to/from Maybell with relocated Clemo traffic barriers
What about the Traffic – from the Conclusion of Study
The consults favor this last configuration. They conclude, from an analysis of the traffic generated by the project, that even under this last proposal with the traffic barriers moved “ residents along Maybell Avenue would not notice a change in traffic as a result of the proposed development. As stated earlier, given the severity of queuing, bike and pedestrian trips on Arastradero Road, it would be beneficial to relocate the barrier on Clemo Avenue to east of the project driveway, so that the project trips cannot access Arastradero Road via Clemo Avenue.”
You may wonder what criteria the consultants use to say that the residents along Maybell ‘would not notice a change in traffic.’ They use an assessment based on a model that starts with the average daily traffic (ADT) volume and then state that a 20 to 30% increase in traffic could be added to a roadway before residents would perceive the increase. As a baseline, they use the ADT weekday of 3320 on Maybell Ave and estimate the average increase from the project would be 120, which is well below their criteria of what is a noticeable increase. However, they do not mention that the ADT on Maybell increased by 25% over what it was prior to the Arastradero restriping project and is already at a level that exceeds ” 2500 vpd, the maximum acceptable volume on a local residential street as defined by Palo Alto’s neighborhood traffic calming program.” [Gale Likens, former Palo Alto Transportation manager in Establishing thresholds of significance under CEQA]
The study strongly favors the Clemo auto barrier relocation, which would direct all the traffic to/from the site to Maybell. “The barrier relocation may be beneficial in that it would prevent project trips from attempting to access Arastradero Road from a stop-controlled approach that is affected by significant queuing issues and bike and pedestrian trips during peak periods. While similar issues are present at the Maybell/Clemo intersection, they are less severe as the traffic volume on Maybell is much lower than on Arastradero.”
The single family homes have garages in the rear and their entrance/exit traffic would be serviced by the site’s main driveways rather than directly onto Maybell or Clemo. This was a change from the first concept, in recognition of the the fact that during the periods between 7:45 and 8:15 AM Maybell Avenue is congested and “there are hundreds of pedestrians and bikes that use the Maybell corridor during this period to access the nearby schools. “
The study acknowledges the already serious problems that occur during AM peak hours on Arastradero: “.. this intersection [Clemo and Arastradero] is currently subject to frequent blockages as queues extend along Arastradero Road from the downstream intersection at Coulombe Drive past Clemo Avenue. Thus, the “Clemo via Arastradero” access alternative, which would funnel all of the project traffic through the Clemo/Arastradero intersection, would exacerbate the existing congestion at this intersection. In contrast, moving the Clemo barrier to the east of the project driveway so that all project trips would access Clemo Avenue via Maybell Avenue would result in less delay.”
Next Steps
The project will be reviewed by the Planning and Transportation Commission sometime in the coming months. In the meantime, if you have opinions about the study and its conclusions that you want the City staff to hear, send them to Curtis Williams, Director of the Planning and Community Environment Department (curtis.williams@cityofpaloalto.org), and to Tim Wong, the City’s staff planner assigned to the project (tim.wong@cityofpaloalto.org).
The Barron Park Association Board would also like to hear your views as well. Send an email to BPA-Board@googlegroups.com.
You can add your comments to this post if you register as a “user” on our website – click on the register link and enter a username and choose a password in the top of the left hand sidebar on our home page (this is required to prevent spammers from adding comments).
Thanks to the efforts of long time Barron Park resident Dick Placone, who went to bat on this project with the City officials, we shall see some additional landscaping of the Matadero Well site in the near future.
Matadero Well Site Landscaping Plan
Some features of the plan:
The existing railroad ties will be re-set and moved inward, leaving room for a 4-foot decomposed granite path along the edge (only for part of the site because there isn’t room next to the Well Site fenced area.
The granite path will also circle around to the rear of the site, where two park benches purchased by the community (one by the Barron Park Association and the other by the Henshel family) will be mounted.
New groundcover plantings alongside the granite path.
More mulch, and the existing material spread out over the area as indicated.
The rehabilitation of the Matadero Well as an emergency source of water for Palo Alto was completed some months ago. The Utilities Department planned to leave the area outside of the fenced-in area the way it was before the rehabilitation effort – which was a bleak and unattractive empty lot (this land does belong to the Utilities Department, and is not under the control of the Parks Department).
This was the situation the community faced despite the persistence of BPA President Lynnie Melena, who spent countless hours over the past several years conferring with Utilities Department people during the course of the well rehabilitation project. As a consequence she was able to get the fence and equipment painted a pleasant green befitting a creekside location, but nothing more. The park benches purchased by the Barron Park Association and the Henshel family were still languishing in storage, waiting for an agreement with the Utilities Department on a suitable location.
This state of affairs did not sit well with Dick Placone, a long time Barron Park resident and the former President of the Barron Park Association. Dick first went to battle with the Utilities Department and leaned on City Manager Jim Keene, who assisted him by having the Utilities Department place some plants around the fenced equipment area. These are hardy, drought resistant shrubs that in a few years, with some care during this coming dry season, will create a natural screen in front of the fence. Claire Elliott, a nearby resident who works with the environmental nonprofit Acterra, has already spent time tending to the new plantings.
This still did not satisfy Dick Placone. So he leaned a little harder on City Manager Jim Keene. The City Manager provided a modest budget for some landscaping and authorized Palo Alto’s landscape architect, Peter Jensen, to prepare the plan shown above. Nearby residents have given their OK . Soon the spot will be an attractive looking place for all the folks in the neighborhood who pass by in their cars or on their bikes, and an inviting place for pedestrians to rest and relax for a short time as they walk by.
Without any public announcement, AT&Ts workers and contractors swooped through the neighborhood recently installing some of their pole-topping antennas along with the cabling and power system infrastructure. These antennas are part of AT&T’s ‘Distributed Antenna System” (DAS), which was approved by the City Council for our part of Palo Alto in January after a long, sometimes contentious debate. This is good news for AT&T cell phone customers who (the company says) will have good service in Barron Park – or will be good news once the antennas are operational.
The antennas look like inverted wastebaskets on the top of an 8 or 10 foot post mounted to the top of utility poles. I’ve seen two of them this week on Barron Ave- one on the 500 block and the other on the 700 block – and a third (pictured below) on the pole on Matadero just opposite the California Native Garden at the end of Bol Park. A fourth was about to be installed on Chimalus, but the AT&T installers broke a water line near the base of the pole and the work is currently on hold pending permanent repair by the Utilities Department.
DAS antenna and equipment mounted on pole on Matadero near Bol Park
While AT&T maintained that the antenna system was needed to improve currently poor cell reception by its customers, the debate on this specific DAS system focused on three issues:
aesthetics of an antenna mounted on top of a pole, and the associated equipment mounted on the side of the pole;
noise generated by the equipment on the pole to power the antennas and emergency back up batteries 24 hours/day;
microwave radiation exposure to residents who live next to an antenna, particularly in second story residences in line of sight of an antenna.
The microwave radiation exposure issue, comparing the output and pattern of microwaves from this antenna to those from cell phone antennas on towers, is complicated and has been discussed elsewhere. Since the antennas were not yet powered, I could not evaluate the noise. In any event, noise would not be problem for this particular location except to some squirrels or birds nesting in nearby trees.
As to the aesthetics, it is in this writer’s opinion that the poles with the DAS antennas do not add significantly to the unsightly view of the poles themselves, with their multiple overhead strings of power, telephone and cable lines, jumble of insulators and transformer boxes. These antennas are not concealed or camouflaged to look like a tree, but AT&T did follow the ARB recommendations and other advice by making the equipment brown in color and so it blends in with the color of the poles themselves. When I was a kid, utility poles were called ‘telephone poles.’ With the cell phone antennas on the top, maybe that name will come back into use.
