Half Moon Bay considers zoning changes

The new rules, which apply to the 300, 400, 500 and 600 blocks of Main Street, came soon after two storefronts were converted from retail to offices and as other vacant properties, including the former home of restaurant Pasta Moon, are on the market. Existing city code allows offices in Main Street storefronts, but not for the next 45 days while the urgency ordinance is on the books. 

The urgency ordinance will likely soon be extended for an additional 10 months, providing enough time for the proposed long-term zoning amendments to be approved. 

Staff is proposing to amend the zoning ordinance to restrict ground floor storefronts on the aforementioned blocks of Main Street to “active ground-floor dependent” uses consistent with the urgency ordinance to preserve “the city’s prime pedestrian-oriented shopping district for residents and visitors.” Allowed uses include galleries and barber shops, for example, in addition to retail and eating and drinking establishments.

“Active ground-floor dependent use means a commercial or public space that is reliant on pedestrian foot traffic, generally open to the public, generates a high volume of customer or visitor traffic, provides ground floor display windows to promote views into the business and sells goods that are typically consumed on premises or carried away by customers or services of a personal or recreational natures,” according to the proposal.

New offices, financial institutions and other businesses that are not ground floor dependent would be prohibited on Main Street. Being closed to the public, generating little foot traffic and having screened windows for privacy are the sorts of qualities officials are trying to prevent on the thoroughfare. 

Some residents who spoke during public comment suggested a permanent restriction on the types of uses on Main Street is problematic due to changes in the marketplace, with one landowner saying he had trouble finding a retail tenant for his Main Street space so he reluctantly leased it to tenant that used it as an office.

“It may be the day comes where this section of the town becomes a state park because it’s so unique and it may not be a retail center, we don’t know what’s happening going forward with the marketplace,” John Evans, a former commissioner, said during public comment. “What we do know is we have some buildings that need to be preserved if we want to keep the character of what we have and there needs to be a mechanism to pay for that and right now the only mechanism is rents that landlords collect.” 

Permits

The proposed amendments also seek to facilitate the creation of housing in some of the city’s mixed-use districts. Currently a use permit, which comes with conditions and represents another layer of city interaction, is required for residential development in some mixed-use districts, including downtown, which a staff report described as “an unusual provision because residential uses are an essential component to establishing a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood.” So staff is proposing to do away with requiring use permits for residential development in those districts.

“Here we have mixed-use districts that fully anticipate a combination of commercial and residential uses and we require a use permit for what should be a principally permitted use in staff’s opinion for residential development,” said Community Development Director Jill Ekas, while bringing up a photo of a house in the city that had to be granted a use permit to be used as a house. “We don’t want to do that anymore.” 

Staff is also proposing a minimum density of 15 units per acre downtown for multi-family development to “ensure modest unit sizes and better housing yield from downtown sites,” according to the report.

Parking

The proposed amendments include new parking requirements, which have not been updated for some time and can be a “significant constraint” on the production of housing, according to the report. Current parking rules are specifically “killing the ability” to redevelop a property across from City Hall, Ekas said.

Current parking rules require garages for all of the parking spaces needed for multi-family or the residential portion of mixed-use development, which the report described as “a very expensive requirement that often cannot be accommodated on small sites.” So staff is proposing that one or two of the required parking spaces must be a garage, but the other may be uncovered in most of the city’s mixed-use districts. Staff anticipates most parking in those areas to be either below grade or at grade behind occupied building frontages. 

For residential development downtown, two parking spaces are currently required per unit, plus one guest parking space for each four units in multi-family developments with three or more units. The amendments propose a parking reduction in line with unit size: one space for each studio or one-bedroom unit and one-and-a-half spaces for each unit with two or more bedrooms. Guest parking rules would remain as is.

“Because Half Moon Bay does not have a major transit facility, staff does not recommend reductions such as those found in some of the higher density Peninsula city downtowns,” the report states. 

For commercial uses downtown, one parking space per 250 square feet of floor area is currently required and staff is proposing to go to one space per 300 square feet to ease development constraints on small lots.

Cafes and restaurants currently must have one space per 45 square feet “which makes it very difficult for new construction to include a restaurant or café” so staff is proposing to change the rule to one space per 75 square feet.

As for mixed-use development downtown, staff is recommending allowing the Planning Commission to grant up to a 20% reduction in required parking if it can be shared by users of the residential and non-residential components of the development. 

Commissioner Rick Hernandez said he wants to see a supercharger station on Main Street to attract electric vehicle drivers to the area. He also called for parking length and width restrictions on Main Street to prevent especially large trucks from parking there.

“It’s kind of crazy to have our drive down Main Street blocked by two or three trucks and it’s a safety issue,” he said. “I think it’s something we really need to look at.”

Another resident who spoke during public comment proposed waiving parking requirements for developers who offer to pay some sort of in-lieu fee to build a parking structure elsewhere in the city. 

Next steps

The Planning Commission appeared generally supportive of the proposals, but decided to continue the discussion to a meeting Jan. 14. The City Council is also slated to consider the amendments for final approval in early 2020.

Early next year, the Planning Commission will also consider below market rate and density bonus provisions as well as other amendments geared toward neighborhood preservation.

zachary@smdailyjournal.com

(650) 344-5200 ext. 102