As a longtime (30 year) Charleston Meadows resident, I know well the development opportunities available in South and Southwest Palo Alto. I'm not opposed to development here but this area needs the infrastructure improvements to support this development. For example, there are no grade-separated pedestrian/bike crossings for the train tracks south of Oregon Expressway, in South Palo Alto. There are currently four well-used separated crossings in North Palo Alto, which indicates the necessity of separated crossings for the highly-used East Meadow and Charleston Ave crossings. There are few bus routes that serve any of Palo Alto other than the VTA 22 and 522 along El Camino and the 89 that travels from the Cal Ave train station to the VA Hospital complex. There is also the VTA 21 that operates between Stanford Shopping Center, along Middlefield, to the Santa Clara Transit Center. South Palo Alto needs bike/pedestrian infrastructure, and we need public transit options. We cannot absorb the City's development needs without the infrastructure buy-in from the City of Palo Alto.

Protect our creeks, whether natural or in cement lined ditches, when development of any kind is adjacent to them. Ducks, Egrets, fish, etc., and the Matadero beaver near the Bay must have habitat protected, along with the banks of the natural creeks (adjacent trees support creek banks, so careful on tree removal).

Outflow pipes will deliver new development runoff with all its pollutants into the creeks and the Bay. This must be thought about and heavily mitigated.

Increase the creek bank setback rules, require City, and Fish and Game monitored restoration by developers of natural creeks, and require appropriate riparian plantings anywhere near them.
Put controls on all nearby lightening.

"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."

The above is a license for developers to keep increasing density AND creating more traffic gridlock while ignoring the fact that we still lack public transit that won't take people in a suburban are where they need to go. And we know how well TDM works having heard the fairy tales for years that there all the growth at Stanford, the Casti development etc will produce "no net new car trips" although anyone can experience the worsening traffic.

Congratulations to Burt for calling out Stanford for removing so many homes from the tax rolls and from availability to non-Stanford people while refusing to do its fair share in ADDING housing that will could toward PA's housing quota. The question is what's going to be done to force them to do their fair share!

"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."

Join the club! Their incessant divisive rhetoric is annoying and illogical.

This is hilarious, because this stretch of land is immediately adjacent to developer Mircea Voskerian's home. He recently tried to cram in a 5-story hotel with not enough parking and no place for delivery/garbage/EMS vehicles immediately in front of our living rooms at 4256 ECR, eliminating all of our natural light.

I'm sure he'll be consistent on the issue, and wholly support this development...

I'm really glad to see Palo Alto's city staff and council taking a close look at this "focus area" on El Camino Real. These new homes would be right in the heart of what makes Palo Alto great: schools, parks, shopping, transit, and more. Yes, let's lift the current height cap (50 feet) at least to 85 feet. And yes, let's lift the current density cap (2.0 floor/area ratio) at least to 4.0.

I hope this is just a start. Palo Alto is in a very deep hole when it comes to building homes. We need to allow more developments like this one near transit corridors. And we need to make it easier to build "missing middle" homes (like duplexes in townhomes) in other parts of the city. Let's get this done!

I would have more concern that HCD was putting undue weight on Palo Alto Forward's comment letters if they didn't keep calling us "Palo Alto Moving Forward."

Thanks Adam for your comment.

As I said at council last night, the new staff proposals with a big thanks to council members Lauing and Stone are a great step forward.

It affirms the positive process of engaging prospective applicants and in doing so finding that major changes in FAR, height and other development standards were necessary but also they would produce results.

If an FAR approaching 4 and height of 75 to 85 feet makes sense in the El Camino focus area, I PTC and council will tell staff to apply it selectively elsewhere such as DTN where I live.

By encouraging selective and larger housing developments in areas close to shopping, services, jobs and transit, we can reduce the number of needed new developments and come closer to developing a compliant and productive housing element while also making more trips accessible without using a car.

Will the MacDonald's remain or be removed for new housing development?

The wolves have been clawing at the barriers since the '70s to build like this. Looks like they're gonna finally get their teeth sunk into some fine real estate. Someone should do some investigative reporting on just how much money is raked in by big developers on projects like these. I bet it would be mindblowing. They're always singing the sad tune of how they can't afford to build too many affordable housing units - let alone, true low-income dwellings for actual poor people. I can hear the echos of "Let them eat cake!"

@Steven Levy, I agree we can build a lot of housing along El Camino, and other 4-6 lane roads.

Do you know if we have a plan to measure how traffic congestion changes with more housing along El Camino?

@Helen Kim - yes McDonalds is going to be razed and become one parcel with the Fish Market with "affordable housing" on it.

@The Palo Alto Kid: The sentence above the photo that says "Housing proposals, projects in Palo Alto" should be revised. It should read: "Housing project proposals in Palo Alto". We could call it Cabrini West.

As for the impact on traffic congestion, without enough parking allocated for the number of residents, traffic will be a mess with people circling around the block trying to find a place to park so they can go home, unwind, and put in earplugs.

All that, plus the loss of two affordable restaurants. What a great idea.

If you don't like the current traffic situation, please recognize that it is the outcome of about half a century of housing prohibition --not of dense development near jobs. This has done three things:

a) Push development into sprawl communities.
b) Deny local workers the option to transit without cars.
c) Prevent formation and preservation of amenities in Palo Alto.

The theory of blocking housing to mitigate traffic is wrong because it implicitly assumes that if you don't build the housing, the people won't exist. That's proven not to be case. Instead, we've gotten crowding within low-density housing (unrelated adults living together), homelessness, and sprawl in exurban areas.

I don't think anyone has any great ideas to make traffic better, per se. Residentiallists have obviously failed very hard. And I wouldn't even claim more density can reduce the trip time to San Jose at rush hour. I do think it can bring amenities within fewer miles of our homes so we don't need to go to San Jose. It can give people non-car options so they aren't forced onto the roads. And it can reduce overall VMT, relative to the alternative.

Residential developers are not "wolves". Rather, they are building a resource that people want: a home in the heart of Palo Alto. Yes, they will earn a profit for their work. But that is just like any company that provides any product or service, whether it is cars or medication.

I am disappointed to read one of the members of our excellent community describing this proposed Camino apartment building as a "housing project" and "Cabrini West". The apparent suggestion is that this Camino proposal is in some way similar to the multiple apartment buildings that comprised the Cabrini-Green Homes, operated by the Chicago Housing Authority (until they were demolished more than a decade ago). In what way are they similar? This Camino building will be 80% market rate and 20% below-market rate (versus 100% BMR for public housing). This building will have a few hundred homes, while Cabrini-Green had a few thousand. Is the suggestion that Palo Alto should not want to welcome as new neighbors the kinds of people who used to live at Cabrini-Green? If so, I disagree.

Cabrini Green was designed to cure all ills and primarily for white people. If you could draw this exact plan as to how Cabrini-Green was zoned you would find a similar set of standards. CG was 75% white and 25% black. Here in PA, we are "planning" a building that 80% of the housing will be at market rate, and 20% will be below market rate. I don't get how you can fail to see this as being almost the exact same scenario demograhpically. Maybe 80% of PA residents can afford BMR, while at least 20% definitely can't. This is the path to certain types of discrimination that erupt when low income residents live side by side with affluence. That's exactly what happened at Cabrini-Green. PA needs to stop foisting pie in the sky concepts that we won't know how it will really pan out until long after those "in charge" today have moved to Beverly Hills or wherever. I believe everybody should have an equal fair shot at good solid housing at a fair price. But that's not how PA is. You have a different crystal ball with a different vision. Each to his own.

One fact that's a game changer is nearly all of the insurance companies in CA are no longer writing homeowner/rental policies. Not even if you move across the street. This debacle is brought to you by Earth, Wind, Fire and Flood. It will take years to get the insurance companies to start writing new policies. IF you can get a policy, it won't be cheap. So what happens when NONE of the 20% BMR can afford renter's insurance? You would have to flip your scenario upside down, where only people can afford it can rent there. Giving 100% advantage to those who have plenty of money.

Start working on an "insurance forgiveness" clause in every rental contract.

If we really want to demonstrate that Palo Alto is committed to adding housing, why don't we condem the properties along University and Embarcadero and convert them to multi-family, multi-story housing. This way they would be front and center to those entering the city.

Stop trying to cram all the housing into South Palo Alto.

/marc