​​Eager to win state approval for its housing plans, Palo Alto is preparing to welcome taller and denser residential projects to an area that is already in the crosshairs of numerous developers: a stretch of El Camino Real just south of Page Mill Road.

The proposal, which the city's planning staff unveiled to the City Council at a special Oct. 4 meeting, targets an area between Page Mill and Matadero Avenue. Residential developments in this area would have a height limit of 85 feet, well above the current 50-foot cap. Building density would be doubled from the current maximum of 2.0 floor area ratio (FAR) to 4.0 FAR, allowing more apartments to be constructed within the new projects. FAR is the ratio of building area to land.

The proposed zoning standards hew closely to what one area developer has requested as part of its project at 3150 El Camino Real, best known to locals as the Fish Market site. The restaurant shuttered its location last month and the developer Acclaim Companies has proposed a project with 380 apartments. The application shows a seven-story building with a height of 84 feet and a FAR of 4.1.

Earlier this year, Acclaim indicated that it will rely on the "builder's remedy" provision in state code, which enables developers to exceed zoning standards in cities that do not have a certified Housing Element. Palo Alto has twice submitted its Housing Element to the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) but has been rejected both times, leaving the city exposed to more builder's remedy applications.

By relaxing the zoning limits at the El Camino sites, Palo Alto is hoping to win the HCD's approval for its next submission and to demonstrate that it has enough housing sites to accommodate its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) target of 6,086 dwellings between 2023 and 2031.

"Our goal here is to make sure we're identifying housing opportunity sites in order to meet our RHNA obligations," Planning Director Jonathan Lait said.

The proposal has a pragmatic element. To date, the city's most ambitious housing strategy has been to add more than 2,000 dwellings around San Antonio Avenue and Fabian Way, areas where many sites are currently zoned GM (general manufacturing) or ROLM (research, office and limited manufacturing) and feature commercial and industrial uses.

Many of these sites are not vacant and HCD has insisted in its most recent comment letter that Palo Alto analyze existing uses that may impede residential development. The city is also required by HCD to provide "relevant information to demonstrate expressed owner and development such as expressed owner and developer interest."

The San Antonio area on the city's southern edge has seen a handful of residential proposals in recent years, with the council approving in 2020 a 102-apartment project at 788 San Antonio Road and signaling support last year for a 75-condo project at 800 San Antonio Road.

But the city's strategy for concentrating so much housing on the southern edge has also attracted criticism from housing advocates, some of whom point to the dearth of transportation services, parks and other resident amenities in the industrial area. They argue that the city should do a better job in distributing new housing throughout the city.

The El Camino area solves many of these problems. It is located near the city center, close to the California Avenue commercial area, a Caltrain station and along a VTA bus route.

It is also the area that has seen some of Palo Alto's biggest and boldest proposals. In addition to the 380-apartment project that Acclaim is pursuing at 3150 El Camino Real, the city is also reviewing a proposal from Oxford Capital Group for a mixed-use project at 3400 El Camino Real, site of Creekside Inn. The proposal includes a hotel with 137 rooms and two six-story buildings with 185 apartments, as well as four townhomes.

Robert Chun, a board member at the advocacy group Palo Alto Forward, lauded the opportunity to bring more housing to El Camino.

"It is close to transit and jobs and amenities," Chun said. "And this plan is fundamentally an opportunity to welcome those low-income families into the heart of Palo Alto, rather than just to the GM (general manufacturing) and ROLM (research, office and limited manufacturing) area."

While the council didn't take any votes Wednesday on the new strategy, members generally supported the establishment of a new "focus area" with relaxed height and density limits on El Camino.

The Planning and Transportation Commission is scheduled to review this strategy on Oct. 11 before the plan returns to the council for formal approval in November.

The new area also opens up the prospect of adding housing at Palo Alto Square, the large property at 3000 El Camino that houses a business park.

According to a new report from Lait, the owner of the site has expressed an interest in adding housing to some of the existing parking pads, though it has yet to file any applications. Palo Alto Square is at the northern edge of the new "focus area," and designating the development as a housing site could facilitate such a project.

Other nearby housing projects currently in the city's pipeline include the 129-dwelling affordable-housing development being developed by the nonprofit Charities Housing at 3001 El Camino Real, former site of Mike's Bikes; the 44-apartment project for Palo Alto educators that has been proposed by Half Dome Capital for 3265 El Camino Real; and the 74 townhomes that the Sobrato Organization is preparing to construct at 3200 Park Blvd., a development that will replace a portion of the old cannery building that once housed Fry's Electronics.

Council members also supported some revisions to the staff proposal, namely tighter restrictions on development around Matadero Creek. Council member Pat Burt and Mayor Lydia Kou both talked about the importance of protecting the riparian corridor, which also happens to be at the center of Oxford's proposed project.

"There is a lot of biodiversity there, so we want to make sure it is protected," Kou said.

She also said it's important to make sure that any development near the Creekside Inn is mindful of the single-family homes in the area.

Kou also lamented that HCD does not consider the amenities that get lost when cities convert commercial sites to housing. She cited as examples the Palo Alto Bowl, the Olive Garden and, most recently, McDonald's and the Fish Market.

Other council members were more enthusiastic about encouraging housing construction on El Camino. Vice Mayor Greer Stone, who serves alongside council member Ed Lauing on the council's Housing Element Committee, suggested that, with recent laws eroding local control, the city does not have a choice when it comes to approving more residential projects.

"We need to get housing built," Stone said. "We need to get over 6,000 units built over the next eight years, so we'll have to make some very big and uncomfortable decisions between now and the near future.

"This proposal allows us to control our future and choose where the increased development is going to go."

Burt suggested that the new "focus zone" on El Camino include extra zoning incentives for developments that provide extremely aggressive transportation-demand management programs, which encourage residents to eschew cars in favor of bikes, buses, trains and other modes of transportation.

Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims supported such a policy and said the city cannot approve new developments "without taking into account the sustainable transportation practices that need to go along with this so we don't backslide on other goals,"

"We need to be making it possible for people to commute in ways that are climate-friendly," Lythcott-Haims said,

Burt also expressed some frustration with Palo Alto Forward, whose letters to the HCD were critical of the city's strategy to concentrate housing around San Antonio. He said he hopes the city will get to a point where housing advocates will realize that the city is taking significant steps to encourage housing, even if its strategies differ from the individual preferences of the critics.

"I believe what we've already done is extremely significant and what we'll be doing in our next update will (also) be so. … It's a question of: At what point in time have we come up with something that is, in the net, significantly positive and important to move forward?" Burt said.