BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
An 80-foot apartment building proposed at the Fish Market in Palo Alto is on a fast track to approval and won’t face another public hearing.
Instead of going to the Planning and Transportation Commission and then to council, Planning Director Jonathan Lait will consider approving the project, Principal Planner Garrett Sauls said on Friday.
“We are hoping to approve the application by the end of the year if possible or early next year,” Sauls said in an email.
The development is the fifth application to go through the city’s “streamlined housing review process,” set up by council in June 2022 in response to Senate Bill 330.
The state required cities to replace their subjective rules for new apartments with rules that were more measurable.
So for example, the rules before said buildings should be designed to respect the privacy of neighbors. The city’s boards and commissions would weigh in before council made an ultimate decision.
The new rules give specific measurements for how windows should be angled and positioned if they’re within 30 feet of another window. Lait decides if the plans comply after a single study session with the Architectural Review Board. Developers can choose to go through the old or new process. Streamlined applications only go to council if someone appeals Lait’s approval within 45 days, Sauls said. On an appeal, state law bans council from reducing the number of apartments unless there’s a health or safety hazard.
On Thursday, the Architectural Review Board said they liked how the new rules worked for the Fish Market project at 3150 El Camino Real.
“This is an excellent project, and we should do everything we can to approve it as soon as possible,” board member Peter Baltay said on Thursday.
Stanford and its development partner, Gary Johnson of Acclaim Companies, want to build a 368-unit apartment building with seven stories.
The building would have a terrace on the sixth floor and a two-level underground garage with 428 spaces, plans show. Of the 368 apartments, 74 apartments would be reserved for lower-income residents, with rents set to match their income.
A single person making between $64,500 and $103,200 could qualify in a lottery for a lower-rent apartment.
The architect designed a building that feels in scale with the city’s old 50-foot height limit, board member David Hirsch said.
“It’s kind of Palo Alto’s first venture into massive, really big buildings and population. And we need it desperately to answer the state’s issue,” Hirsch said. “So I think it’s a prototype of something that should even be considered for the future in other buildings in the city.”
Board members said the architect did a good job of breaking up the building with features like recessed windows and balconies, rather than having long two-dimensional walls.
“I really appreciate the ins and outs of the building,” board member Kendra Rosenberg said. “I appreciate the dynamic facade of this. I think there’s been a lot of thoughtfulness in terms of how this will present.”
Johnson and Stanford have a second application on file that invokes the “builder’s remedy,” a provision in state law that allows developers to ignore local rules in cities that were late on their 2023-2031 Housing Element.
Since the builder’s remedy application, the city has been working with Johnson to get a project that meets the city’s rules, Sauls told the board.
Johnson turned in a city-compliant project on Aug. 13 while leaving the builder’s remedy application on the table in case his latest proposal is rejected.
“It’s the culmination of two years of collaborative work between our design team and Palo Alto planning staff,” Johnson said on Thursday.
Baltay thanked city planners for working proactively with the developer.
“It’s the first time in many, many years that you just worked with the applicant to find a project that works. We’ve avoided a builder’s remedy project. We’ve brought something together that really meets our standards. We’ve compromised. They’ve compromised. It really works,” Baltay said.
Build it! This is a great location (3150 ECR) for new homes, near transit and shopping. So many of our friends and family members cannot afford to live here, so we need new homes. This proposal is for 368 homes, including 74 at below-market prices.