City backing off on more offices: Redwood City had considered amending downtown plan to allow for less housing

The modifications to the maximum allowable development standards of the Downtown Precise Plan, which governs 183 acres in the city’s core, also would have reduced retail uses by 52,000 square feet.

But the Planning Commission did not get to hear the report from staff because a decision was made to keep the numbers as is by city planners, who requested a continuance of the item to a future date to make some minor adjustments to the precise plan, Assistant City Manager Aaron Aknin said Wednesday.

The adjustments include allowing for a small percentage of offices to be located in existing buildings and setting aside some of the remaining 1,112 housing units approved for downtown for affordable housing, Aknin said.

“We are not recommending adjustments to any allocations,” Aknin said.

The revised modifications will come back to the Planning Commission for a vote in May, he said.

The changes were being considered because it is expected that developers will build all the allowable office spaces approved in the plan by 2015 while applications for housing and retail are not nearing the limits approved in the plan, which the City Council adopted in 2011.

Since the plan was adopted, 1,388 housing units have been approved as well as 199,932 square feet of offices for downtown. The plan allows for more than 300,000 square feet of offices to be built in the future and more than 1,100 homes.

The move to back off on modifying the limits was seen as a victory by some residents who are mindful of the fact the region is in the midst of a housing crisis and that years of community input helped craft the precise plan’s maximum allowable development standards.

“I’m very appreciative the City Council and planning commissioners have been listening to the public. They got a lot of letters,” Lee Callister said about individuals who opposed the modifications.

He called the staff’s decision to pull back on the modifications as “a victory for reason, common sense and public participation,” on the Facebook page Redwood City Residents Say: “What?” which has become a sounding board for residents related to the city’s building boom.

“Contrary to the city’s party line, residents are not simply ‘resisting change,’” Sarah Phoenix wrote the Daily Journal in an email. “Rather, we are asking the city to slow down and evaluate the impact of the developments currently in the pipeline before amending the [Downtown Precise Plan] to allow further office high-rises.”

The council’s priorities should be preserving residents’ quality of life over short-term developer profits, wrote Phoenix, who also participates in the Facebook forum.

Redwood City has become desirable to build in as eight new development proposals have been submitted to planners.

They include 229 units of housing in two projects and 540,000 square feet of offices in six projects. Some of these developments fall just outside of the Downtown Precise Plan area, however.

bill@smdailyjournal.com

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