A developer wants to redevelop a motel on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, using a controversial law that’s been in effect for less than a week.
Developer Bayhill Ventures submitted an application with the city on July 1, the day SB79 went into effect, to redevelop the Coronet Motel at 2455 El Camino Real into an apartment building, planning documents show.
Bayhill and owner Hans Brender of Atherton are using state law SB79 to get quick approval on buildings up to seven stories within a quarter-mile of a Caltrain station.
There is a two-week window in Palo Alto where developers can submit applications under SB79 because rules the council approved on June 15 don’t kick in until 30 days after the vote.
SB79 could result in 1,600 apartments around downtown, including the Stanford Shopping Center and neighborhoods south of Forest Avenue, and 900 apartments around California Avenue, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said in a report for council.
Looks like a prison or maybe Fort Knox.
There is nothing controversial about SB 79: the people of California, through their elected representatives, passed a law allowing multi-family homes near busy mass transit stations. I’m glad it has gone into effect in Palo Alto (at least for the first half of July).
The proposal here is a six-story building with 76 new homes, including 12 affordable. It is less than a ten-minute walk to the Cal Train, and even closer to the stores along California Avenue. I like the Coronet Hotel (I happened to spend a couple nights there last month), but this these new homes will be a much better use of this land.
SB 79 is controversial and based on a fraud. The fraud is that Caltrain is “mass transit”. Caltrain is not mass transit and never will be. Caltrain is boutique transit only capable of moving a tiny fraction of the the peninsula’s commuters. The only mass transit on the peninsula is the network of vehicular roadways. The real reason Caltrain exists is to serve as a pretext for connected developers to strip-mine the rich vein of amenities that have accumulated in desirable communities.
Adam (who called the motel “dilapidated” in another publication) is wrong. There are multiple ways that this site could have been redeveloped under our own zoning to add more housing. Those include the base/underlying zoning, a PHZ (!planned community housing) and I believe the new retail “nodes” concept for development along ECR.
I look forward to a realistic version of the project. The rendering offered looks like a hastily put together for the loophole and not at all a fully realized project for this site.
Looks like a prison. Not looking forward to a “realistic version”. Undoubtedly it will be yet another cynical Khrushchevka.
Add and external television antenna. Not everyone can afford cable TV. An elevator larger enough for an emergency stretcher to lay flat.
Most people want single-family homes, not apartments. All this effort to build more and more apartments/condos is ultimately going to result in an oversupply of overpriced housing nobody wants. Also, people paying market rate for housing don’t want to live with the people they’re subsidizing.
Did an architect actually design this? Why not just build 1, 2 or 3 large skyscrapers in South Palo Alto next to the JCC to and meet all of Palo Alto’s obligations. This piece meal destruction of the town is tragic.
Piece meal destruction is not an accident, it is the plan. The authors and supporters of SB79 are driven by envy fueled hatred of suburban communities like Palo Alto and want them destroyed. Nothing Palo Alto ever does will ever be enough. If Palo Alto ever meets the current mandated goals, then new goals will be imposed until Palo Alto is part of, and undistinguishable from, the expanding San Francisco urban megalopolis.
Most people want single family homes. Can most people afford them? I bought my home in 1999. No one else even offered on it because it needed so much work, which my family did on our own. Decades later I would not come close to qualifying for that same home. In other words, single family homes are a dream for “most people”.