An apartment building near the Midtown Safeway would be demolished and replaced with a 12-unit townhome development under a proposal that the city received last week from a San Mateo-based developer.

The project at 739 Sutter Ave. would replace an existing eight-unit apartment complex with two three-story buildings featuring 12 townhomes, according to the application filed Thursday by the developer, Grace Li of 739 Sutter Ave, LLP. Each unit would have a two-car garage and a deck, the plans show.

The development would also flout about a dozen local zoning rules and design guidelines, a hurdle that Li hopes to overcome by relying on the State Density Bonus Law, a measure that allows residential developers who include affordable housing in their proposals to request exceptions from design standards. While the number of concessions is typically limited to four, Li is requesting a dozen exceptions from local rules, including greater height, smaller setbacks, a narrower private street and fewer trees than the city's development regulations typically allow.

The project would deviate from city guidelines by not including trees or other landscaping as screening on its interior side and it would run afoul of a recently created rule requiring fa<0x00E7>ade breaks.

The townhome buildings would be 33.5 feet tall, exceeding the 30-foot height limit in this residential zone. They would occupy 50% of the site even though a code-compliant project would cover no more than 35% of the property.

But even as Li is invoking the State Density Bonus Law to request 11 waivers from local regulations and one concession (greater building height), she is asking the city for a streamlined review process, which typically applies to projects that meet Palo Alto's recently updated objective design standards — a detailed set of rules that govern everything from garage door placements and window sizes to fa<0x00E7>ade breaks and porch configurations. The council adopted the new standards in 2022 with the goal of expediting reviews for compliant projects.

The application states that the townhouse project will feature a "contemporary" architecture style, with numerous measures to enhance the privacy of neighbors. The third floor in each building would be stepped back so that decks would not look directly into neighbors' yards, according to the project description.

The project would also include trees that are "planted strategically" at the rear fence to obscure the sight line and a 7-foot-tall fence with a trellis to help maintain privacy, according to the application. n