Life science development approved in San Carlos

The Bransten Road property will have a similar architectural design to the Industrial Road property, which sits just across the street from each other. The facade of the building, deemed attractive by Planning Commissioners, will be largely glass windows, metal and concrete with surface-level parking surrounding the building. Occupants of the Bransten Road site will be allowed to access parking in the structure built for the Industrial Road project. The two sites will also share a shuttle bus service.

“I think it’s in line with the vision the city has to right-size parking for each kind of development so we don’t build too little but we don’t build too much,” Commissioner Ellen Garvey said.

The site will also include private outdoor seating areas for employees and a public pocket park on the corner of Bransten and Industrial roads. A total of 55 trees will also be planted around the site, substantially more than the seven trees the developer would have been required to replace, including six heritage trees, to make room for construction.

Commissioners largely supported the project, calling the building attractive and noting their appreciation for the parking plan between the neighboring sites and the proposed landscaping plan.

Chair Jim Iacoponi and Commissioner David Roof said they would have liked to see the developer also consider using recycled water as part of the project but Principal Planner Lisa Costa Sander noted the purple pipes and infrastructure needed to tap into that type of service have yet to extend to the east part of town from Redwood City’s Redwood Shores neighborhood where the infrastructure has been installed due to difficulties crossing Highway 101.

Some community members shared similar positive feedback on the proposal. Most who spoke during the meeting’s public comment period shared concerns about the types of research that will occur on-site especially because the developer has asked for a height variant to install 23-foot-tall exhaust stacks on the roof of the building.

Niall Malcolmson, a principal architect with DGA Planning, said the height of the ducts is meant to help distribute fumes and chemicals from the materials being studied in the lab at a high velocity into the atmosphere, noting the materials will be highly regulated. When pressed to elaborate on the types of materials that will be studied and released into the atmosphere, Terezia Nemeth, Alexandria Real Estate’s San Francisco executive vice president and regional market director, said they’d know more once they have a tenant to occupy the space.

Residents argued the developer could provide more details, however, with one speaker asserting that the types of pipes being installed are usually only for higher biosafety level materials.

“I feel that that’s a known quantity before construction even begins so this comes across to me as a resident [as it] there’s some evasiveness going on. It’s either intended or it’s not,” resident Jeff Mollie said.

Planning commissioners recently voted 3-1 to recommend that the council ban highly hazardous materials from being studied in the city while adding additional regulations for the study of materials in the biosafety level 3 category like yellow fever and West Nile virus. Nemeth said they would comply with city policy, whatever it may be.

Recognizing the community’s concerns, commissioners, during the March 20 meeting, suggested that developers and staff provide more details on the types of materials that could be exhausted within staff reports. Those documents are made public and published online as part of the body’s meeting agenda.

“We’re going to have a lot more discussions around bio labs and facilities and I think the public is asking for a little crisper understanding of what comes out. You’re talking about chemistry coming out of stacks and it probably doesn’t sit well with the people listening,” Iacoponi said. “Our community is asking to know and I think they have the right to know what will go out.”