Charter school OK’d amid traffic, safety concerns: Redwood City officials waver on whether industrial zoning is right fit for Rocketship

Though Commissioner Connie Guerrero acknowledged education is a top priority for her, she had concerns about how drop-off patterns, which often involve parents parking and walking their children to the school entrance, could be coordinated with the current level of traffic and types of businesses already located in the area.

“For me, the opportunities to … be able to give these students the tools to be able to succeed is really, really important but we also need to look at making sure the school’s compatible,” she said.

Business owners with warehouses and offices near the stretch of Charter Street between Spring Street and Bay Road where the 1.2-acre lot stands said curtailing the hours of operation and parking for trucks and other large vehicles delivering materials and products to and from their businesses would hurt them.

Kathryn Renz said she has owned a business on Charter Street for the past 12 years and observes some 40 trucks leave between Spring Street and Bay Road each morning. She wondered who would be responsible for the safety of the children expected to walk to school in the morning and afternoon since the trucks she uses for her business traverse the Charter Street sidewalk students would use.

“It comes to a point that I can’t operate,” she said. “I can’t operate moving six to eight vehicles into my building … having them leave within an hour and having hundreds of children walk by.”

Other business owners expressed concerns about cars queuing on Charter Street as they wait to drop their students off at the school.

Cari Pang Chen, associate director of the nonprofit Rebuilding Together Peninsula, said she and her organization support the mission of the charter school. However, she had concerns about a school near an intersection and area affected by the city’s growth and development in the 10 years since the nonprofit moved to 841 Kaynyne St., the same block as the site proposal.

“The concerns that we have brought as a prospective neighbor have really been about traffic and safety because they are real, everyday concerns that we see going in and out of our site,” she said.

Chen was concerned the nonprofit’s driveway, which would line the back of the school, would be rendered unusable should cars queue on Charter Street and the adjacent streets during drop-off and pick-up times.

Harrison Tucker, director of real estate with Rocketship, said assigning grade levels different arrival times would help stagger the flow of cars during morning drop-offs. A driveway designed to direct the flow of traffic through the school site and double as play spaces for the children and programs offering incentives to parents who carpool and employees who use public transit or bike to work would also help ease the flow of traffic, he said.

While Commissioner Shawn White expressed concern the 38 on-site parking spots would not be sufficient for special events and parent-teacher conferences, Tucker said an informal agreement reached with the Fair Oaks Community Center at 2600 Middlefield Road would allow parents to use the center’s parking lot for special events and that parent-teacher conferences would be staggered or conducted at the homes of the families, which would ease traffic.

Commissioners agreed a condition of approval to formalize the school’s off-site parking agreement with the Fair Oaks Community Center and to include drop-off and pick-up observations and on-street parking survey in the project’s traffic management plan would help monitor the availability of parking for neighboring businesses and those visiting the school.

Tucker also said the site is central to the families of students who currently attend the school with 40 percent of the families living within walking distance.

“This really is a neighborhood school,” he said, adding that the charter school has received the support of the Redwood City Elementary School District to relocate there. “This is the right location for us.”

Long process

Rocketship was approved by the Redwood City Elementary District Board of Trustees in early 2015, along with another charter KIPP Excelencia Preparatory, which shares locations with Hoover and Taft elementary schools while Rocketship shares a location with Kennedy Middle School. State law requires public school districts to allow charter schools on the campus of existing facilities, so long as they have classrooms to offer.

Rogelio Benitez, a parent of two students who attend Rocketship schools, said he has been frustrated with what he found to be a confusing process to build a school. After the charter school submitted an initial application for the project in the fall of 2014, it came before the Planning Commission two other times for review, once in November and once in April.

“It’s disappointing because we’re wasting our time, and the most important thing is we’re wasting our kids’ time,” he said.

Marie Gil, Rocketship Bay Area regional director, expressed excitement about the commissioner’s approval in an email Wednesday.

“The parents of the North Fair Oaks community have been fighting for a public school of choice in their neighborhood for three years. The Planning Commission vote is an important acknowledgment of our mission to close the achievement gap for all kids in Redwood City,” she said. “We are excited to open our school in such a vibrant place and serve even more families.”

Industrial zone

Radcliffe said she was concerned approving the project could signal a pattern of “spot zoning,” where zones could be amended or updated to include new uses depending on the projects proposed within a given zone. She said she felt industrial zones were disappearing in the Peninsula and that they should be protected to ensure the city has a diverse set of businesses to support it in tough economic times.

“This is a light industrial [zone], I hold that designation very dear,” she said. “Right now, Redwood City is going through booming, great times, that’s not always the case.”

Commissioners discussed what the area, which includes Hoover Elementary School and Summit Preparatory Charter High School less than a mile away, might look like as new developments, such as the Broadway Plaza housing development expected to add more than 500 new housing units to the city’s housing stock less than a mile away, become available.

Because the proposed school site borders property owned by San Mateo County, county planner Rob Bartoli weighed in, confirming that the county’s zoning for the area had been light industrial to capture the diversity of uses in the area and that county officials are considering rezoning it to industrial mixed use in the coming years. The school is also applying for a permit with the county to build a parking lot on an adjacent property.

Commissioner Kevin Bondonno acknowledged that shifts in the economy and the site’s proximity to other jurisdictions made it difficult to predict what the area might include in the future.

“Redwood City cannot answer the question of what that’s going to look like in the future,” he said.

Dave Tanner, owner of a home and landscape design business on Charter Street, expressed his concerns about safety and traffic at Tuesday’s meeting and said he is working with other business owners to file an appeal of the Planning Commission’s decision, which the City Council will review at a future meeting.

“We weren’t there to talk about the school, we were talking about the location of the school,” he said. “It’s a planning and zoning issue.”

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