Okay, good evening, everybody. I'd like to call the planning commission workshop of March 10th, 2026 to order. Can we have a roll call, please?
Commissioner Gerlach? Here. Commissioner Luxe? Here. Commissioner Perlman? Here. Commissioner Shadlik? Here. Commissioner Wood? Here. Vice-chair Barber? Here. Chair McKay? Here. Looking at tonight's agenda, can we have a motion to approve that? So moved. Second. All in favour? Aye. Any opposed? Nope, okay.
January 27th, 2026 minutes. Motion for that. So moved. Second. All in favour? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Acceptance of communications and correspondence. All the correspondence that was received on this item came in before we produced the packet so you've already received it as part of that.
Great. Thank you. Any declarations of conflicts of interest? Yes. I have to recuse myself for this matter tonight because I live across the street. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Any other conflicts of interest? Export to communications? Nope, okay.
Non-agenda public comment. This time is set aside to receive comments from the public regarding matters of general interest, not on the agenda, but related to planning commission business. Pursuant to the Brown Act, the planning commission cannot consider any issues or take action on any request during this comment period. If you wish to make a public comment about something that we are not discussing tonight, please approach the podium at this time.
Going once. Okay. We'll close the non-agenda public comment and move on to our workshop. Could the staff report please? Good evening commissioners. Long time no see. Good to be back. As you were all aware, this is a workshop tonight so no action will be taken. The project is entitled The Willow's Condominiums.
Our site address is 156 West Grant Street on the southwest corner of Grant Street and Grove Street. So the action tonight is just to conduct a planning commission workshop for a proposal to construct a four-unit condominium project.
A workshop is an opportunity for the applicant to present the project to the planning commission and receive informal feedback from the commission and from the public.
So just a little background. The applicant did hold a neighborhood meeting at the site on January 22nd to explain the project to the neighbors and show them the plans, those types of things, just to get a general idea of the project.
Take some answer questions from the public or from the neighbors. And then on February 11th, the applicant did submit the application requesting this planning commission workshop tonight.
Project site, as I noted, southwest corner of Grant and Grove. Jason uses mostly residential, multifamily, condos, a single family to the north and to directly across the street to the east.
And then, as you are all aware of the neighborhood, in the Grove Street neighborhood plan up to the north, then we have industrial areas directly to the south of the project, down at the point of the triangle, along the west side of Grove Street.
So just a brief project description. The project is a four-unit condominium project with on-site parking. The parcel will be subdivided into condo parcels and common area.
There's also a request to modify the Habitat Preservation Area boundary to accommodate the project and the removal of three to four heritage trees.
The application submitted are a tentative parcel map for condos, the Habitat Preservation Area modification. In this instance, we don't have a distinct Habitat Preservation Area entitlement, so we typically use the building envelope modification and the project we subject to those specific findings.
Also a major designer view for the multifamily development and also the heritage tree removal permit.
Potential required applications would be a variance for maximum building height and or a variance to encroach into the 25-foot riparian setback of Norton's slew.
As noted in your brief staff report, the standards for review of this project are subject to the general plan policies and goals, the Grove Street neighborhood plan, the city's land use code, subdivision map act, State of California, and Title 17 of the municipal code, which serves as the city's subdivision ordinance.
So tonight's recommended action is to receive the applicant presentation. The applicant team is here. They've brought their own presentation that we'll put up on the screen for you.
You will be receiving public comments.
And then provide non-bonding comments and initial reactions to the proposal.
So the project team tonight before you, Warren and Nancy Fine, they are the property owners. Daniela Coco is the designer, and I believe Matt Watson, the contractor, is also here.
So with that, we can go ahead and welcome the project team for you.
Really quick before we do that. Does anybody have any questions of staff before we do the applicant presentation?
Okay. Welcome.
Well, thank you very much for the public attendance. And nice to be here. And thank you for your time to review our, or to at least hear our introduction to the project.
The project is at 156 West Grove Street, which is at the intersection of Grove and West Grant. It's approximately three-quarters of an acre.
And the project team is here. I'm one of the owners, Warren Fine. Nancy Fine is also one of the owners.
Daniela Coco was co-designer, and Matt Watson is the proposed contractor for the project.
Geotechnical was done by JPC Associates, and Aaron Arthur was the WRC environmental consultant, which he did the biology.
Tree identification. Civil engineer was Court Munsell of Munsell Civil Engineering here in Hillsburg.
Next.
Here are a few slides. The center slide is the site, and it orients the various pictures around the center.
We have pictures at the intersection. We have pictures looking down Grove, up Grove, West Grant, and so on.
And across the street we have the Grove lofts, which was actually the subdivision that this particular parcel was a remainder of that subdivision.
And I think that was done in the early 2000s, and the Grove was built in 2006, 2007, and we can move to the next slide.
So here's the zoning map for Hillsburg on the right, and on the left is a blow-up of the area, and there's a little purple triangle at the intersection of West Grant and Grove.
The triangular shape is the parcel, and is zoned currently ORM, which is multi-residential and office.
Next slide, please.
So the workshop objectives for us, for the design team, is really to introduce the basis of the design that we considered when we prepared the solution.
Then obtain community input. We've actually obtained the community input that was in written correspondence, and we have responded in this presentation to a few of the key items.
And at the end of the presentation, we'd like to obtain informal feedback from the Planning Commission and achieve basic clarity on the applicable statutory and guideline requirements that governance design.
There seem to be some conflicts in which zoning requirements and community guidelines which may be applicable, and so we're seeking guidance on that, on those particular issues.
And also to discuss the density requirements, which has also changed over the time from when it was originally zoned and the current zoning map, regarding the design basis.
Statutory requirements, I think, are in the Healdsburg General Plan and the Healdsburg Municipal Code, and guidelines are under the Grove Street Neighborhood Plan.
And there's an important difference there when it's statutory and when it's a guideline. So there's a certain amount of judgment that's going to have to go into the things that appear to be in conflict.
Okay, next slide. Can't read this, but on the left we have the excerpts from the land use code chapter 20, and you go down through that, and you'll find the side yard setbacks are, for a two story, equals 10 feet setback, which is how it was designed, and how the layout was done.
And the height, according to the ORM zoning for the Healdsburg Municipal Code, is 40 feet.
On the right, you see the Grove Street Neighborhood Plan, which, again, are guidelines, and it says 35 feet is the height, and there's a 30 foot setback for this yard off of, or the distance off of Grove Street.
So there's a difference. And we'll address that. You'll see the solution that we came up with, and then we'll talk at the end about how the commission views those interpretations that we've made for our design.
Next slide. So from the Heald Street, I mean, from the Grove Street Neighborhood Plan, you see the zoning, which was PORs now ORM, and on the left, you see the specific plan, which is basically hatched area, and north of west.
Grant and the park.
And the parcel we're discussing and the parcel across the street, which was, again, the original
subdivision, was excluded from the specific plan. And so, from this, we made the interpretation
of the Hillsburg Municipal Code is the governing statutory requirements for the design. Next
plan. So here's some pictures. The center picture is the Grove Street loss across the street, which
used the Grove Street neighborhood plan as a basis for the design. And you'll see the pictures
that are included in the West, in the Grove Street neighborhood plan. Largely described
Queen Anne and Victorian and, you know, that style of single family homes on a single lot
with picket fences and 30-foot setbacks, et cetera. Our site is not R1. It's ORM. So, next
slide. The Willows, I won't go through this. You've all seen the documents and had plenty
of time to read it. It's zoned ORM. We're talking about two buildings, two condominiums
for her building, maximum height, 40 feet, two stories above grade. So, the first story
is living, dining and office. Second story is three bedrooms, three baths, with access
to a roof deck. There's elevators who serve from the garage to the roof deck. The site
is approximately 31,000 square feet. Buildable area is about 14,000 feet. And the building
footprint is 6,600 square feet. And the construction duration is planned for 24 months. Next slide.
There's a 3D view, Grove and West Grant on the corner. There's four condominiums.
You see two buildings, one on the north and one on the east. And there are two condominiums
in each, we call unit one, two, three and four. A common access to garages which are off
the street and tucked in to the hillside. This is a sloping site from the northeast
corner to the slew, which is the hypotenuse of this triangle. Next slide. So, quickly here's
the layout. The hypotenuse of the triangle is Dorton slew. There's a site wall which
contains the drive surface and the entrance and the ingress and egress for the site. The
green area is the habitat preservation area with a slight modification given take off of
what appears on the title map. And there's no legal description of that line, of the definition
of the habitat. So, in our discussions with the planning group at the city, we talked about
a little give and take and a modification is possible. So, anyway, that's the result of
that discussion. Again, the two buildings, the one on the left is building one, the one
on the top is building two, and it has units one, two, three and four in them. It shows
utilities, shows which are available. It shows ecology ramps for trash access to the streets
and trash pickup as normal. Next slide. Here's the landscape plan which and the habitat,
heritage trees are four of them which would be removed. Actually, one was diseased and is
now gone. How it disappeared, I don't have any idea, but it's no longer there. So, there
are three habitat, I mean habitat, three heritage trees and the rule is three to one replacement
and we plan to put the redwoods and the oaks and the black walnut replaced in the habitat
zone. If they don't fit, we'll put them someplace else in Neilsburg. Next slide. Here's a
view going up Grove Street with ingress, egress, landscaping along Grove and 3D view. Next. Here's
continuing up Grove, showing the solution we have come up with. Again, you're looking at
unit four on the left and unit three in the middle. Next slide. You see you're looking
north, you're looking, you're an east of the building and the main entrance to the
pedestrian entrance to the site is between the buildings. There's lighting there at night
and you see, again, you see unit two on the right and unit three in the middle and four
on the left. And regarding the height, you'll see this later in a slide on building number
two on the left, you'll see the height above grade is about 30 feet on the right side to
the top of the pergola on the roof deck and on the left it's about 37 feet to the roof
to the planter. So we tried very hard to get 35 feet visible and presentable from the street.
You don't actually see the 40 foot building because of the slope of the site and it's
the same on the building one. It's about 30 feet on the east side, on the street side,
as you're looking at it to the high point. It's 40 feet near the, on the other end
of the building, down slope. Next slide, please. So here you see these. This is
a night shot lighting and day shot from the north. These are north elevations, north perspectives.
Next slide. And here's from the, from the southwest and you see into the courtyard, garage
entries, entries into the units, balconies and roof deck and then you see the night
lighting scheme to identify, excuse me, identify the site wall and identify entrances to the
various units. Next slide. This is a view from the east across the street from the growth
loss and here is the elevation. We've taken some of the landscaping away so you can see
the buildings and then there's the night shot above so you see the lighting. Next. Elevations
and you can see here the elevations with the actual visible scale part of the building
that you would see from the street. So 37 and 30 feet on the right, they'll have 30 feet
and almost 40 feet on the right on the north elevation. And the dotted line represents
building height and the center, and the center point of the building is the building
is the average of the low point and the high point and so that is downhill from what is
visible. That's what appears here on the dotted line and it's 40 feet from that point
to the highest point of the building. And it's the same story for the elevations on
the north. Next. Floor plans. This is a garage level, two-car garage, two-car
garage, the ecology, trash, enclosures. There's an entry stairwell to the first floor and an elevator
and on the left top corner of unit one you'll see a shop and utility area.
Units one, three and four are identical. They simply are oriented different and have different
orientations to break up the units and to provide interest in architectural articulation.
Next slide. Going up to the main floor, if you look at unit one, down in the bottom left corner
you see the living surface, the living room, you see a kitchen, a dining, an outdoor patio,
stairs up, elevator up, small office and a half bath. Next slide.
Bedroom floor, three bedrooms, three baths, the laundry room, closets, elevator and a stairwell
to the roof deck. Next slide. Roof deck is a small covered area where it covers the stairwell
coming up and covers the elevator and then access to the roof deck which has a pergola
over it, mostly to support the shade structures, especially in the summertime and this provides
privacy and an outdoor space for these condominiums. The site is, as you can imagine, is very constrained.
It's a sloping site. There's no room for people to have gardens or put those on the roof
and to give them the outdoor space.
You see the entry, sorry, you see the entry between the two buildings, the main pedestrian entry.
Next slide.
So, in the correspondence that we received from the city, we tried to address each and then
these two slides, this one and the next slide, we tried to consolidate the community issues
if you could go back to the first slide, the community issues and the response from
the design team. So, I'll briefly go through our response to the key issues as we interpreted
them from the correspondence. The first one is scale, bulk and mass. There seem to be
a number of people who are concerned about that. The scale of this building, of this set of
condominiums, the height is determined by the HMC and ORM zoning allows 40 feet and we're,
as you saw from the elevations, we're within that height limit. The bulk and the mass are
governed by square footage largely and as far as I know, there is no code or guideline
limitation to the size of a unit in ORM. And there are many examples of 2,000 to 6,000
square feet residences on Grove Street in the Grove Street neighborhood. So, it's nothing
unusual about each one of these units has about 3,500 square feet of conditioned space
and about 1,500 square feet of unconditioned space including the roof.
On Grove Street, the height above grade which is what you see is like, as I said, between
30 and 37 feet. So, it's not, when you talk about scale and bulk and mass, the response
is we're within the guideline, the statutory requirements for Heelsburg. ORM, another point,
ORM of zoning. So, it's not a number of people who are concerned about the height
of the building. So, it's not a number of people who are concerned about the height
The meeting is intended to be a transition between R1 and the downtown commercial, and it's
of the building. So, it's not a number of people who are concerned about the height
a narrow boundary between the residential historical district and the downtown commercial area. So
it's a second point. The third point, a number of architectural features have been used to
reduce the bulk and the mass and the appearance on the street line, and these are articulated
facades. There's no comm. It's articulated. We use two buildings instead of one to cut down
the size of the building. We use variable roof heights and a varying palette of materials and
colors and the final point, landscaping to soften all of it from the street view. Setbacks again
are based on the HMC or M zoning. And if we refer to figure 1.2, which is coming up after
this slide, I'll show you that when we get there. And a specific site, a specific plan
as defined as capital S, capital P is not required for this lot as we saw in the land use designation
in the Grove Street plan. Traffic and access was an issue for the community. I'm going to
have to refer to the city on traffic. I can't do anything about the traffic. And in discussions
with Jeff and the Planning Commission, he's talked to the, as I understand, to the
city engineer or the traffic engineer, and they're talking about reducing the speed limit
along Grove Street. People are the people in the lofts, the people that were concerned
about this or raised the concern. You know, people coming around, the drivers coming around
Grove Street coming up the hill, you know, are going more than 25. And to get out
of the Grove Street, they're having difficulty because of the speed. And the access for the
willows is a little further downhill. And it has an unobstructed view north and south or
right and left. So it shouldn't be a problem for ingress and egress to the willows. I
think there is an issue of speed. And again, I can't answer that. The city is going to have to deal
with that. We tried to reduce the vehicular ingress and egress to one location off of Grove
instead of designing it with garages that each had entry and exit to Grove Street.
It's a busy street. There are school buses and children and people. So we decided that it should be,
let's get the garages off of the streets, tuck them in behind the buildings, have one access.
And it also suits the terrain and the topography of the site. And the main,
and the other ingress and egress or access to the site is the main pedestrian entrance between
one and two. Next slide. The final grouping of comments that we addressed or we put under
the rubric, neighborhood impact. And the first one, and again, these are not verbatim. They're
summaries of how we interpreted it. This design is not consistent with the neighborhood use
character and aesthetics. Again, it's hard to address one's aesthetic appreciation of a building.
ORM, again, is designed to be a transition between downtown and commercial and the residential.
And the team felt that a contemporary design fit very well with the character of the community.
It's not trying to be R1. It's not trying to be a Queen Anne. It's not trying to be a craftsman.
It's not trying to be a single-family home. It's a multi-family set of condominiums.
And there are multiple examples around the world and around the U.S., in fact, for modern and traditional
architecture existing together. You can imagine I.M. Pei and the plaza at the Louvre coincided
and they came up with what some people hate and some people love, Gaudi and Barcelona.
And I could go on and on. But the point is contemporary design was chosen.
We think it fits nicely. We think it will be a pleasing addition to the architecture and the fabric
of the different designs for Healdsburg. The scale, the second point, the scale is dominant
and imposing. Again, scale is determined by three things, two things, height and square footage.
And I think we're well within the requirements of what's allowed for this site.
The street-facing facades look like the backs of the building. But I think if you look carefully,
you'll see that Unit 4 is actually a side view. And if you look at Unit 2, it is back
and end view. If you look at Unit 2, it is on Grove Street. It is the front of the building.
And if you look at from the north, you'll see two views that could be considered the back.
But we're also looking, if you look across the street, the single-family house is a side view.
If you look across the street on Grove, the one on the corner is a side view.
We don't see the street. We don't see the building entry on the front.
If you look at the Grove, you see four units, single driveway, a parking lot in front.
And most of it is behind the first four, and they give way from driveways onto a common driveway,
which is exactly what we did for 156 West Grand.
The Rift-X look like downtown hotels, and it's not like residential design.
The answer is, this is not R1. It's not residential design. It's a transition piece, an infield piece
that allows that, again, there's no prohibition for Rift-X.
Question on concern about light pollution. In all exterior lighting, especially in California,
it's all compliant with city and state codes, which is down lighting, no sky pollution, et cetera.
And the 40-foot height, again, comes up, and I've already addressed that.
Next slide.
So we come to the part of the presentation where I think we should have some discussion
and you can tell me if our design is compliant or not or what we should do
or how we can take your comments into consideration, and then we can have some takeaways.
We have a number of slides beyond this which we can use to use in the discussion
if those points come up, but I don't want to bore everybody with going through all of that.
So I think we're at the point where we can talk about...
Can I bring up something there? There was an additional comment that wasn't...
I'm sorry. Could you speak from the mic?
That way people that are viewing elsewhere can hear you. Thank you.
There was an additional comment that came in, not written, but when we had our meeting at the property
and that was someone felt, I don't know, maybe this person sent us an email.
They felt that the project would shade them entirely and they wouldn't ever have any sunlight.
And so I thought we should go to 26 and just answer that input.
This is another input from the community that we have some answers to before we open it up.
You're right. Thank you, ma'am.
And that's 26.
So if we go to the next slide, I think it's the next...
Yeah, it's really difficult to see in this projection, but it's basically a shadow study.
These are three pictures, three simulations for the summer, June 21 solstice.
The model is geolocated and you can see in the morning shot the white outlined area does not actually...
The shadow at 8 o'clock in the morning does not leave the property and certainly doesn't shade anyone at Foss Creek.
If you go to noon in the summertime, it doesn't even leave the shadow of the building, doesn't even leave the site.
And on the 6 p.m. in June, it reaches partway or across Grove, basically.
So this building, the set of buildings does not impinge at all on people's sunlight or shadow them in any way.
If you go to the next slide, this is the winter shadow study and at 9.30 when the sun is coming up,
you'll see the long shadow across West Grant and to the back side of the property just to the north of us.
And if you go to noon, it goes partway across West Grant and if you look in the evening, it goes through and across the intersection.
So again, the impact of this building from an exposure point of view to me, it doesn't impact the community at all.
Any other questions about that?
Okay, if we can go back up to them.
If we can go back up to them.
Okay, so the discussion and take away so comments from the city planning.
Thank you. I think I'd like to do questions from the commission to start off and then we'll go to public comment the workshops for the planning commissioner.
Generally pretty casual but with this many folks I want to make sure that we keep it productive and we all get out here by, you know, a reasonable hour.
Absolutely.
So I'll do let's do questions from the commission for either staff or the applicant and then leave the comments till after the first public comment and then we'll have the applicant kind of respond to questions and discussion and public comment.
And then we'll provide deliberation and recommendations with a commission. And then if anybody else wants to make another comment, we can do that.
And then we'll go from there.
Okay, so I just, you know, how are we going to proceed the questions will be noted in minutes or how does that happen so that we have a record of the questions and the responses.
The meeting is recorded. I don't know how detailed the minutes would get, but the video will be made available to everybody here and to you as well.
Okay, okay, great.
So does anybody want to take it off with some questions.
Go for it.
Thank you very much for doing this project.
I have a question really for staff.
I thought that the ORM district height limit was 35 feet. Is it 40 feet or is it 35?
There's a discrepancy between the actual ORM zoning and the zoning code and what is in the
actual Grove Street neighborhood plan for that design district, which is 35, 40 respectively.
Okay, so I'm wondering if it's 40, why is a variance needed? What's the height variance for?
Well, in most cases, if there's a specific plan, that would usually take precedent over the actual zoning.
That's what we do up on Trinity and other lots in the Grove Street plan.
So in that case, you're saying that the Grove Street neighborhood plan would take precedence over the ORM zoning?
In most cases, correct. In most cases.
What about this case?
Yeah, I think what I was going to recommend is that once there's an application that matter is either settled
or the city has a specific position that they're going to stick to on that interpretation.
Can I add two cents?
No, it's a staff question.
Yeah, okay.
I kind of have the same question. My question was, has the conflicting language come up before with another district?
Maybe not even Grove Street, but like another one and how it conflicted with the general plan or the general guidelines?
And is there a precedent on another conflict, maybe someplace else in the city with a design district?
Yeah, we're going to need to dig into this one because what's unique here is you have a specific plan that was adopted in 2000.
I mean, 2000, and then you have a general plan that was adopted around 2009, 2010, along with the implementing zoning ordinance.
So there's a lack of consistency between those two documents.
Typically what I've seen is when you go through and you adopt a new general plan and zoning ordinance, you go back and amend that specific plan to make sure that you had consistency amongst all the documents.
So we'll probably have to have, depending on whatever the final design of the project is and what the issues are that are remaining, we'll work with the attorney's office to kind of figure out what supersedes water, what takes precedent.
Because it puts staff in a difficult position as well as the commission, for sure, when you have inconsistencies like this.
Also a setback question as well.
Yep, all those types of issues.
Different setbacks.
Yeah, I think I'd prefer the city to land on a determination on that and provide that to the applicant and allow the applicant to design a project that is in compliance with the city's interpreted development standards for the site.
I don't, I mean, if they don't want to, and they want to go for the variance, that's their decision, but I think it probably be a good faith to at least allow them to go a non variance route and present a project that complies with those standards.
Sure.
Anybody want to go next?
No questions.
Yeah.
You're with fire.
No, public works.
Is there anybody can dress fire now.
So as far as the motor court in the back, it has to be that wide for fire department access.
There's no room there was to give whatsoever fire is reviewed the project.
Okay.
Is it 20 feet Belgium was consistent with their, with their dimensional plans for multiple units. It's 20, the entrance driveway has to be a minimum of 20.
And is there any more information as far as the conversation as far as the tree removal specifically the redwood tree at the very corner and how that came to be.
The tree that's been removed.
I saw that one, but the one that's like six feet closer to the corners, basically six feet from the sidewalk.
Was there any discussion of trying to save it or why it couldn't be saved or.
Well, in the city's tree ordinance, there are there are certain exemptions of having to get a permit.
So even if you do get a permit, you can make findings that the applicant has a right to develop the property, even if there are trees based on mitigation, which is a three to one tree replacement.
Yeah, so basically, you know, sorry, many times a tree is not going to stop a development from happening.
Yeah, just like six feet from the sidewalk.
Yeah, I was my observation is that there are redwoods at every corner, including the one that's there now.
And it's fairly distant from the corner of the building.
So it just seems like, you know, if we're looking at landscape in general for our town, a redwood is, you know, is our is our tree here.
And if it's not impeding the development, and I understand that, you know, in that regard, if it's not impeding the development, would you consider, you know, keeping it.
So that was just my feeling about it.
It's a it's a the city is asked to reduce the height about two feet on that corner, which would take the height of what the elevation of the terrain.
There's a there's about a two foot retaining wall around that corner.
And the city is asked to take it down to sidewalk level.
So it's a drop of about four feet, three feet.
And the tree is right there.
That's one issue.
Second issue is because the the garages are cut into the hillside, the root structure of that tree, even though it has a taproot,
the tree structure would be a problem for the retaining wall structures of the garage in the construction of that building.
I mean, I'm an architect, so I deal with this all the time.
I mean, I understand the first comment that you made, but in terms of excavating for your garage on unit two, it seems like you are plenty far away to not impact the tree.
I mean, you might, you might get, you know, 10% of the roots or 15% of the roots.
Well, we're inside the drip circle of that tree.
No, no, no, I understand.
But you can definitely work with Arborists and you can definitely, you know, it's also that those roots go under the street.
So it's, you know, cutting back there is is doable, is all I'm saying with an Arborists review.
Okay.
It's definitely doable.
Okay.
And I would encourage you if at all possible.
It brings up another, it brings up two, two issues for the landscape plan.
Again, we anticipated replacing those trees and further down the hill in the slough area and at a ratio of three to one, so we have three redwoods instead of one, not on that corner.
The other issue is going to be the construction.
As I said, the construction of that corner is going to require an excavation or retaining wall of about, well, depending on how we do it, if we bench out or if we go straight down, we're going to have to come in front into the setback area and insert a cutoff wall in order to
retain the street with anchors back under the street in order to be able to hold that, that excavation.
And that would then provide us enough room to put the retaining walls in, do the parging, do the French drains, do the backfilling, etc.
So another issue that's coming, that comes up for the city is, or from a designer's point of view, is can we put a temporary or a permanent cutoff wall in the setback area?
The building is set on the setbacks.
But the footing for that retaining wall would go probably two feet underneath, down 16 feet, it would go two feet into it, and that would be a position for the cutoff wall.
I don't see that as a problem because it's all hidden and it's underground.
Yeah, it's all underground.
It's not like it impacts the visually of the street.
Right.
But that's a construction concern.
That goes on the list of things that we need some discussion with the city and what's acceptable to the planning commission.
First off, just thank you for your work so far.
It's clear you've put a lot of thought into it.
In terms of questions, one, I may have misunderstood from your presentation.
I just want to clarify with staff that the Grove Street neighborhood plan aside from the question around height and setbacks, the design elements and everything else in that document would apply to this parcel?
Or is the assumption that only HMC would?
Well, the grocery plan is divided up into what's called design districts.
So only the land use element of the Grove Street plan would apply for the professional offices, high-density residential, and also the zoning.
But when you get into actual design, you have to go to the design district for the ORM.
There are actually, I think, two guidelines that actually apply.
It's very vague.
So that's why we are defaulting to the citywide design guidelines for multifamily development because the Grove Street plan does refer to the design review manual, which was the one prior to the citywide design as we have now.
Thank you.
I guess I was also hoping to understand, I'm curious if other orientations were considered for the site.
I appreciate that you've proposed it as two separate buildings.
I like that.
You know, I guess I'm specifically thinking about in terms of ingress and egress, and I'm curious if was it ever considered on West Grant, farther West, and not having any ingress on Grove.
You just, you know, how did that come to shape? I know you touched on it a little bit.
If you look at the contour map of that site, and I think we have it.
We have it. I don't know which slide it is. It's after the after this if you go.
Keep going forward.
Back, back, back, back. One more. One more.
One more. No, one more. Keep going back.
There you go.
That's not it.
Anyway, just describe it. Anyway, the slot, the site slopes from the corner to the slew.
And the access off of West Grant is not really possible in order to get the slope and the grade of the ingress.
There it is. The ingress in from the West side and stay out of the habitat.
And it's too steep and it takes up too much terrain because it's such a constrained site.
We went around to the other side and came in on on a contour. You'll notice that we're roughly at 107 elevation coming in off the street.
And that is the elevation of the slabs in two, sorry, in one and four.
And then two and three are stepped up.
But in order to get that slope, you can see the distance and the vertical distance which creates the grade would eat up a lot of terrain.
And we just felt that it would be better to come in.
I'm confused. Why can't you put a retaining wall on the West side of the building that fronts on West Grant and lower and then have the driveway go around that corner onto West Grant?
It seems to me all you need is a retaining wall that deals with the grade.
Where specifically are you talking about?
They already have a retaining wall right there.
They can have a deeper retaining wall and cut the driveway in and avoid Mr. Gerlach's traffic problems.
It becomes a problem if we move the retaining wall that you see at the West side of Unit 1.
If we move it further into the habitat.
Then you move the building.
We move it further into the habitat.
I don't think that's what we're talking about.
What we're talking about is you've got this path that's along the West side of Building 1 and you've got a retaining wall there.
If you didn't have the driveway over here, you could move the buildings in such a way that you could just go straight out to West Grant right there.
I'm not saying that the buildings would stay the exact same footprint, but you would gain the...
And then you would, you know, reshape the buildings in such a way, because you've already
got about a, you know, eight foot path there, and you'd need 20 feet.
The other issue is the bridge. The other issue is the bridge, which is right there.
Well, it doesn't.
Your issue is, there's no bridge on West Grand Street.
No, it starts right there. It starts right there.
There's a bridge.
There is a bridge.
Where the walkway comes back in, and where we have the Recology Rams here, and it goes
across the sluice right there.
Yeah, but...
No, I know. I mean, for what you're showing, you're already showing that you're building
in that area. It's not where the bridge structure is at all.
The roadway on West Grand is about five feet above the sidewalk.
If you're, can you speak out of the mic, if you're going to speak? Thank you.
Thank you.
You can see it there.
Most of you who are really familiar with this know that you can see the sidewalk there on
West Grand.
No.
And you can see where you have that little walkway along the edge of building your unit
one.
Right there, if you go out to the sidewalk, the street is up like two or three feet above.
So to, you know, there's a certain grade that's necessary for a car to go in without
scraping the bottom of the car.
And it's just if maybe the city wants to totally redo West Grant, maybe that can be possible
given where the street is and the elevation of the street and the elevation of the sidewalk.
It really, I mean, we did look at that.
Yeah.
We did.
Because the address is on West Grant.
Another opportunity would go between the two units.
You know, again, you'd reorganize it because you wouldn't have a driveway on
the grove, on the south side of Grove of the property.
But you could go, you know, you could separate building one into two units and have a driveway
between them.
And then that would come out on West Grant.
You wouldn't, you know, it would just be in a place where there's no parking, there's
no parking there now.
Well, there are three units, there are three parking spots there now.
So you would lose the parking spots on the street.
Number one.
Park on that side.
Number two, if you separate building one into two parts, then you don't have the common wall,
which then doesn't qualify as multifamily.
So there's a problem.
There's a problem with that.
Okay.
Any further questions?
I don't know.
This is probably not something that we have, it's not in the staff report, but I'm curious
about this habitat preservation area, what it means, how it was established.
So maybe once we circle back on this, we can get a lot more information about that because
if it also says planning commission shall base its recommendation, is that a recommendation
to council?
Or are we making that decision to just a little bit more detail on that I think would
be helpful for myself.
I'm supposed to make findings to approve a modification for preservation area.
It seems like a serious matter.
If you go to the slide, we have a slide on this actually, if you go down through the slides
after the discussion, keep going.
Yeah, keep going.
Keep going.
Go, go, go.
Keep going.
37.
Slide 50.
There.
Back.
Back one.
There.
So in red is the original line, and the green is the proposed line.
So we've taken some of it and given some back.
It would be a net roughly 2,000 square feet out of 14 or 15,000 square feet.
So it's maybe a 10% reduction in the habitat.
But if you go to the subdivision map that is part of the title report, there is no legal
description of that line.
And we traced it.
We did the best we could with the title document, which is a scale document.
We scaled it, and that created the dotted line, which is on the title report.
Again, discussions with the city, give and take.
There's no, from the biology, there's no real loss of habitat, no endangered species.
We're far enough away from the bank.
We're not touching the bank of the slew.
And that's the proposal that we came up with.
Okay.
Thank you.
I can elaborate on that a little bit.
Sure.
As far as how that habitat area was established, it was established at the time of the parcel
map itself.
And this was the remainder parcel.
There was a biological report done then, and this, although it doesn't really provide any
sort of rhyme or reason, so to speak, of why these boundaries were established.
From what I can tell, it was based on probably the denseness of the vegetation.
The denseness of the vegetation itself, because the vegetation gets less and less as you go up
towards the street.
Just to, but I've read the report.
There really was no, like I said, there's no legal description of it, but that's my take
on it, and that was just designated on the parcel map itself on one of the pages.
Okay.
Thank you.
So that's basically how it was established.
My questions were asked and answered.
Great.
Good teamwork.
Okay.
Any other questions at this time?
Okay.
Let's go to public comment.
So if you'd like to make a comment, just approach the podium.
And I don't know if we're putting a timer up, but try to stay within your timer.
And like I said, we'll probably have another chance later on in the evening to make another
comment after you've heard the discussion.
Thank you.
My name is Tom Carlisle.
I live on the corner of Grove and West Grant, so kitty corner to the subject property.
Is this okay in my reverberating in my own ears?
I have a few concerns.
One of them is this is a very active intersection from my own house.
I hear honking.
I hear yelling.
People run through the stop sign all the time and somebody gets pissed off about it.
So that's not the concern of the applicant here, but what we see is that
especially going south on Grove, people as soon as they go through that intersection
and they're going down the hill towards city hall, they speed up.
Now reducing the speed limit to 25 isn't going to stop that.
Everybody goes too fast there.
Another concern is you're going to be exiting the applicant's property in right at the same
place where people from Park Point and the Post Office and the Foss Creek
Apartments are trying to get across and turn right or left.
And I know from working out at Park Point, when I try to cross, you have to, you
know, it's a curve and people come down really fast and they're coming the other
way from the city hall area.
Now you're adding one more egress from this property that it's going to be very
hard to look right, left, right before you leave the property.
So that's my concern and I would really encourage that the city do a traffic
study and see if this is feasible to do something.
Okay. Secondly, there's also school children right now who get picked up on a
bus right at that subject property.
And so I'm concerned about where that bus is going to pick kids up.
And there's also, yeah.
So the other thing that I'm concerned about is construction parking.
There's no parking on the Grove Street side of the subject property.
And there's only three parking spaces on West Grant Street.
So, and the lot is very constrained.
I understand what it's like to, you know, to try to build on something that is
that constrained, but there's going to be a lot of construction parking needed.
And I'm afraid they're all going to park in front of my house on West
Grant and Grove and that we need those parking spaces.
We need it for the community and for the, for the residents.
There's a lot of people in the community at the very bottom of West
Grant Street that park up there.
And I also know from my own experience that contractors, when they park their
trucks anywhere, they work out of their trucks.
So it just means the construction zone is now going to be out off the
property unless the city and the applicant can mitigate it somehow.
So I would really like to encourage the city to be very specific on where
construction parking and how material goods are delivered and how
trucks enter and exit because, you know, not only is that a tough turn
into the property, but think of big steel and wood trucks and, you know,
all the things you need, you know, and how is that going to be dealt with
in our neighborhood.
Lastly, I would just say that I think the sizing and the massing is
way out of scale for the neighborhood.
I think, I don't really understand the whole ORM designated.
That's a little bit new for me tonight.
So I again really want to encourage you guys to really look at is this
building appropriate for a residential community?
Maybe it is a transition zone and they should be able to build up.
I don't really have a problem with building on the property or even
going up.
It just looks really massive.
And I think it's imposing on the actual neighborhood.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, future speakers agree with anything that's been said.
You can say I agree with that thing that has been said.
Save yourself some breath if you'd like, but not a requirement.
Hi.
My name is Sarah Peña.
I live directly across from where this is going to be built.
My first concern was privacy.
Our living room windows directly open up to where this giant
building is going to be, which kind of falls into the line of,
well also in their PowerPoint, they said that their buildings
will optimize privacy.
So I'm curious how exactly they're trying to optimize
privacy for the neighborhood.
They also showed a shadow plan.
The shadow plan actually did directly affect our house.
It showed it on the plan that they showed.
It looks like the shadows are going to just completely cover
like the front section of our yard where we have plants growing.
Also our living room windows once again will be completely
shaded out by this building.
They also have parking concerns as well, not just for
daring construction, but for having more families living on
the block.
We already struggled to find parking on our street.
So that's just something to consider.
And then I'm genuinely curious.
I don't know if I can ask questions, but I'm curious if
this is low income housing.
I don't think it is.
I'm not.
I'm just genuinely curious how much these condominiums will
be and how accessible they actually are to families coming
and trying to live in Healdsburg.
Aside from destroying heritage trees and encroaching on
habitat to create more unaffordable housing, disrupting the
neighborhood by creating noise with two years of construction
and potentially adding to the current traffic and parking
issues for our neighborhood.
I just don't see how this benefits our community.
And I'm really actually curious about that.
Thank you.
Good evening all.
My name is Sunny York.
I live at 216 A Foss Creek Circle.
So in the condominium complex that will butt right up to
this project.
One of the things that has not been mentioned, and I'd be
very curious to know from the project planners is obviously
there is a creek or a slew there, whichever you would like to
call it.
I'm wondering if studies will have been done or what's going
to happen to ensure drainage as it stands right now when we
have significant rain.
There are drainage issues that flow into our parking areas
as it is now.
And that would be a really big concern to me.
Particularly as they talk about digging and excavating into that lot and doing things that
need to happen, what is going to be done in terms of studies to make sure there's not going
to be any impact there would be really critical. Our unit is actually located in the back of
the property, so we will be butted up right against that property line from where the
community sits for Frost Creek Villas. I also have very large concerns around the height
of these units. We do not have a lot of outdoor space that is our own private space within
Frost Creek Villas, but we do have small patios, and if we're talking about what sounds to
be garage level up roof 40 feet, you've now got people on roof decks that are looking right
down upon us, taking away our privacy and well-being, frankly, to have to worry about those kind
of things. So I would like to know more about that. The parking is also a concern. I know
that there are a lot of families that live on West Grant behind us and down where the
cul-de-sac is, just down from where this property is located, and these buildings will happen,
and they struggle for parking as it is already. The last thing, and this has been said, and
I do appreciate you listening to the comments, is this seems massive for this. I think the
lot is .76 in terms of the size, and what is being proposed in my mind feels like
it is not going to fit in aesthetically at all, but rather be this incredibly large thing
that has been fit onto a very small lot. And I would ask you to consider that for the
community and for the people that have lived here for quite some time and pay property
taxes and bought these homes a while ago. So thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Chair McKay, Vice Chair Barber, Commissioners, thank you for the opportunity to comment on
the proposed condominium project at 156 West Grant Street. My name is Anne Geary and I reside
across Grove Street from the development site. I appreciate the effort that goes into planning
new housing and I support thoughtful development that strengthens our community. However, I have
significant concerns about this proposal as I specified in my email to the Commission
on behalf of myself and eight other Grovelofts homeowners. My first and enduring impression
of this project is that the building's height and overall mass, particularly at the southern
entrance, are inconsistent with the scale of the surrounding neighborhood, despite proposing
the garages below grade at four levels high per individual unit with rooftop decks. This
structure would certainly be a vertical anomaly in our residential neighborhood. Compounding
the outside scale is the lack of adequate setbacks which continue, contributes to the
project's sense of bulk and visual dominance. Plus, the street-facing facades are the
backs of the buildings, intensifying and unwelcoming institutional presentation
without sufficient setbacks. The structure comes across as imposing and out of proportion.
In general, this project does not appear to follow the intent of the Grove Street neighborhood
plan which was created to guide development in a way that respects the existing character
of the area. This project does not meet those expectations and risks overwhelming
nearby homes and streetscapes. When projects diverge significantly from these guidelines,
this proposal does. It undermines both the neighborhood plan and the public trust that
went into creating it. New development should enhance the neighborhood, not disrupt it.
Rather than being a positive addition to the neighborhood, this structure may stand
as a jarring presence that reflects poorly on the design process and on the community
as a whole. I respectfully ask the commission to require revisions that better align
the project with the Grove Street neighborhood plan, particularly regarding height,
massing, and setbacks, so that any new construction contributes positively to the
character, harmony, and livability of the neighborhood. Thank you for your time and your
consideration. Thank you.
I'll try not to be too repetitive, but there will be some repetition.
Chair McKay, Vice-Chair Barbara, Commissioners Jeff Scott and Amanda, thank you for the opportunity
to comment. My name is Tom Gerlach. My wife and I live at 506 Grove Street, directly across from
the project. I also have concerns about scale. The general scale of our neighborhood is two
stories, including the offices. The plan is specific about transitioning to office. There are
two stories. This project is four stories. It's not consistent with the Grove Street
neighborhood plan. The view we will see across from our house, which is what this is based on,
what we can see, is the 44 to 45 foot high structure from the garage to the top of the roof
on unit four. As the renderings show on sheets D04 and 06, this is a four-story
structure with a solid concrete wall. Unlike the Grove Laws where the buildings follow
the slope of the land, 156 is embedded in the hill and has a largely uniform and flat
roof level. So the scale of the project will be established by unit four at the southwest corner,
which is above grade, even though much of the northern end of the complex will be Grove Street
grade, which I think is very creative and a great idea. But in terms of what we're going to feel
from the building, it's from the southwest corner. In addition to the height of the project
being too high per the 35 foot height limit of the neighborhood plan, the setback seem inadequate
and the lot coverage is quite high. In my email of March 2nd, I requested the city conduct a focus
traffic study for the project. I think that's been well covered. It's tricky now for us.
And I try to describe that in that email. We just need to make sure that the complexity added
by this new project and we both driveways can be used safely. I would also like to comment
on the habitat preservation area. RHOA is the steward of the riparian area on the east
side of the slough. Once it leaves Warren's property and comes under Grove Street, Mary Price,
who lives adjacent to the slough and is here tonight, is deeply involved with our HLA landscaping,
suggested the setback lines for the top of the bank is best best left unchanged.
If there is to be a land swap, the inject objective in the land use code is clear. There
should be no reduction in the habitat area or the functional value of the habitat.
And I suggest that 14.7% reduction is material. She also suggests it would be helpful if Warren
took steps to enhance the habitat by removing all invasive plant species and adding native ones.
There's an issue, which I don't want to take too much time on, but this is the city's
opportunity to do this. Once we have it, the city has nothing to do with the slough.
I can't find and neither can marry where the city would have any legal requirement to keep
that slough clear, except for public safety. So this is the time for the city to say we want to
invest in habitat. As noted, there's going to be a lot of earth moving on the environmentally
sensitive site that northeast corner by my calculations is 14 to 17 feet high for the
retaining wall. I think it can be done. It certainly is normal, but it's 1,730 cubic
yards with 504 yards reused to build the podium. So if you look at DO-6, you can see this,
I'm estimating because it has the plants here. You're looking at a 5-foot retaining wall to hold
the podium, which is what you'll see from 216A at Foss Creek. So that's part of the scale
feeling that you have. And so there's a lot to be done on that site. It's all doable,
but it's a lot. In summary, we are in favor of more housing in Healdsburg.
This is the last available developer lot in our neighborhood. I think there are several design
options to enhance the project, reduce the scale, reduce the cost to be consistent with the
neighborhood plan, and still be economically feasible. Thank you. Thank you.
Anybody else?
Okay. Well, let's go to the applicant if you want to respond to anything or if we want to start
with our commission comments up to you if you'd like that opportunity.
I think I address the the comment on the, sorry, I think I address the shadow study and the
shadows that would not be, would not appear at the Foss Creek residence.
So I think we need to deal with, you know, the facts there and the issue of privacy.
We live in a city and there are privacy issues and we've tried very hard in our design
to allow the privacy of everyone around, including the people that will be the owners
of this, of these properties. The issue of Foss Creek, I mean, sorry, the issue of drainage
along the slew is something that we've discussed with the city. It is silted in.
There has been flooding at the bridge on Grove Street in the heavy rains. So there is an issue
of drainage and that's something that the city is going to have to deal with. I can't, you know,
if it's plugged, if the, if the drain at Grove Street is plugged,
we're going to have, you know, we're going to have flooding. So there's the issue and how
do we mitigate, how do we ensure that drainage from Norton Slough gets to Foss Creek
and it's blocked in several places? So is that a city responsibility? Is that the Grove Street
lofts downstream into, into Foss Creek? Is that above Norton Slough to the north, underneath
that bridge? But it is a problem and it needs to be addressed. There's an issue of the water table
which needs to be studied. I mean, and that's coming up. As soon as I figure out,
as soon as we figure out what kind of a project we have here, the foundation is going to require
additional boring and additional soil studies to make sure that we're not into the water table
and then what kind of a footing I'm going to be able to put there to support these loads. So
that's coming up. We have, we've done an initial geology study which shows
2,000 PSF for bearing capacity and these foundations, these spread footings are designed
for that. So, but we'll see when we get to the final and we get the final borings
underneath these structures. So drainage is an issue. Scale we talked about.
Sorry? Oh, school bus. There's a lot of activity on that corner. Everybody acknowledges that.
We planned a school bench for mothers to collect children. It's, again, we live in a city and
there's traffic. And West Grant is a very narrow street. So, again, access coming in and going
out in West Grant is a problem for ingress and egress into this property and it does nothing
to change the traffic flow. So that's my comment about traffic and construction. We haven't really
talked about construction but our construction man is here, our general contractor who will
lead that is here. We've talked with the city about it.
Parking can be achieved on the site and the scheduling of
crews in and out of here can be accommodated on the site. That, I can assure you, is not a
problem. Trucks coming in and out, yes, we'll have delivery of lumber and we'll have delivery
of reinforcing steel and concrete trucks, etc. But all of that will be
Taking care of onsite. And the contractors can park. We have plenty of parking space around
the perimeter on the site. So again, I don't see that as a problem. I agree with the comment
that was made that it would encourage the city to make sure that that's done correctly.
And we do have a construction plan that covers that issue. The tree issue we've talked about,
moving that line, moving that habitat line is, you know, we're moving in and out of
raspberry bush and poison oak mostly. And there are a few trees that will come out. And therefore,
heritage trees, which will be replaced. So again, as a developer and as an engineer, I don't see
that as a main problem. And the impact on the bank will have no impact on the slew at all, in my
opinion. So those are the, those that test my response to what we heard today.
Thank you. That's all I have. I would, I would probably stay up there. We'll probably have some more
questions and comments from the commission. Does anybody want to start? Phil? No? Go for it.
I want to thank the neighbors. I know people who live on all three sides and who face the site
directly. So I'm very familiar with the site. And I know that, I mean, I went over the other
day just to look at the site and I couldn't find parking because there's no parking on Grove.
And West Grant was all parked up. And I did end up on Grove about three houses down from the corner,
the north of the corner. So, you know, I think about not just the people who are going to live
here, but they're going to have guests. They're going to, you know, there's going to be deliveries.
And, you know, there's lots of issues that come up because of that. So it's just something
to be, I think, sort of hyper aware of. I guess gas could come into the parking area and park in
front of your garage or something. But I just think that's going to be a continual issue with
the neighbors over time. But that's, I didn't really want to talk about that. I wanted to talk
about the design and a lot of the issues, you know, a lot of the comments that come up
about the bulkiness, why it looks bulky. And I appreciate from the standpoint of the code,
it may be fine. But I think someone mentioned the idea that the neighborhood is two stories.
And even under the Grove Street plan for commercial, it suggests that it limits it to two
stories. So, which is true, because down below there, below your site to the south, all those
commercial buildings are pretty much two-story buildings. They may be tall two stories, but two
stories. On your entire building, it appears like it is three stories throughout. And then,
certainly on the south end, it appears to be four stories. And at 37 and a half feet,
that's, you know, pretty close to being four stories. What I guess, you know, it's just one of
those things to think about is you're building at the, like if you just take whatever, unit two
right here at the corner, and you actually follow the contour of the site, and it would step down
the hill, the issue is that the roof here on unit four and the roof here on unit two are
essentially at the same height, but the ground has dropped off quite precipitously there. So,
I think that's one of the things I would suggest is looking at massing in such a way
that it mimics, sorry, that it aligns with the, with the contours. The other thing about it is
that I think the, the, the array of materials. Now, I'm an architect. I love modern
architecture. I have a house just up the street at 753 that I designed that had to meet all of
these guidelines. Had to have the, the gable or hip roofs. It had to have porches. Had to have
all of that. Now, I'm not suggesting that you have to do that, but that house that I designed
is a modern interpretation of the historic houses that are there. So, there's definitely
ways to do that. That makes this, you know, and I think the, the issue is that building one,
while it may be two units, looks like one building, because you don't know where the units start
and stop because of how the materials are, you know, oriented on the building. So that if you
made it, again, you know, if you made a distinction where this then was repeated there and
repeated there, not exactly design wise, but that you could actually read that there were
three units, three houses there. So if you could read them in such a way, then that would break
down the scale. Because I think part of it is that you've oriented this all very horizontally.
And if you look at every other house and, and the grove across the street,
they're all oriented vertically, not horizontally. The grove is a good example of,
they may be all attached, but they look like individual units. So you can tell that that's
my house, that's Fred's house, that's Tom's house, you know, I mean, you can tell the difference.
Here, you can certainly tell on the corner, but this looks like a very big building because
there's no start and stop, building two. There's no start and stop to where, you know,
my house is and the next house is. I think also it's the horizontality.
And then the roofs really, really emphasize that.
So I think there's ways to do that. I think it's a shame that you have garbage that's out on the
street side. I think it's sort of a shame that you can't put the garbage to the back
and then have garbage trucks just come into, so you could just bring your cans out in the
back so everybody could do that. But that's a whole issue that I don't quite understand
because you've got, I mean, especially like this one right here, I guess that's Unit 3,
where you've even emphasized the door to the trash with a little trellis structure.
So that seems like an odd design decision to me, but you'd have to deal with the trash company
to understand that. So I think that's it. I mean, I think that, you know, even though
you're not required to be in the specific plan area because you're out of that area,
this whole corner has all these historic houses. I mean, that's the hub of the historic houses.
So there are ways to do that, again, so that maybe there aren't flat roofs. Maybe you have some
gable roofs in there to sort of, you know, and that breaks down scale because if you have
walls coming up and they go like this, it's different than walls coming up and going like that
because you've caught a triangle out of that mass. So I think there are ways to
mix, you know, to do a mix that, I'm not saying, you know, of course if you have a roof deck,
you're not going to, you know, you can't have a gable roof, but there's certainly,
you know, tower-like elements like this element on Unit 2 that could have a gable roof on it.
So that you could, and again, that would start to relate to the scale and look of the other houses,
still being modern, still being, you know, having the square. I'm not suggesting that you make them
smaller, but I think there are definitely ways to break down the scale by looking at the
architectural elements and the guidelines that are in the grocery plan and still do exactly
what you're doing here, but it wouldn't feel nearly as massive because just because you don't
think it's massive, it's a look. You know, it's a look. It may not be physically massive,
but there's visual things that happen on all these houses, particularly like the house across
West Grant at the corner is a very large house. I mean, I've been in that house. It's a very
large house. I mean, it's probably 6,000 or 7,000 square feet, but if you look at it, it's broken
down. There's a lot of breaking down of the massing with bays and, you know, setbacks and gables and,
and again, I'm not saying that you have to design a Victorian house, but if you look at the,
you know, design elements of those houses, you could definitely make this be, in my opinion,
far more appealing and I think address what everybody has been talking about in mass scale.
Who's next? Go for it.
Um, so I'm the newest commissioner and I have not come across a situation like this
where things, the conflicting setback and height aside, it appears to be in conformance,
but the neighbors are very, very vocal about the scale in the mass. And so in my mind,
that's hard to ignore. And there was one comment made that resonated with me, which is if we're
going to build at this scale, it undermines the neighborhood plan and undermines the trust in the
commissioners. And that, that concerns me. I personally think the architecture is interesting
and I like modern architecture, but I very much agree with Jonathan that there has to be ways to
break it up. And I would also encourage revisiting the egress and ingress because I think if there
were a solution on West Grant, it would really be ideal for all of the neighbors. That's it.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'll try it. First, as an introductory comment, I am not terribly impressed with the constant
claims that this thing fits the basic statutory standards of height, bulk and setback.
We have a set of design guidelines that were created because a house on Second Street actually
built by a planning commissioner fulfilled all those requirements and was just gigantic in terms
of the neighborhood. There, in fact, is a provision in the general plan that says that
basically building should respect the neighborhood that they're in, which goes to a lot of the
comments and about height and bulk. So the fact that you technically comply with the biggest
envelope that the city codes created is, to me, the start of a conversation, not the end of it.
So I think we can keep going with the kinds of things that Jonathan said. The second comment
I'd make is that I find the notion that we've squeezed these large buildings as close to the
streets and as close to the neighbors as we can as something that deserves to be considered.
I've got basically no big kind of concern about how close we get to the slu if we can protect the
drainage. We can move those buildings quite a far downhill. And I would even say if we
violate the 25-foot slu setback, welcome to the club because this planning commission
has consistently allowed incursions into those setback requirements when necessary to deal with
design problems. Foss Creek is chock-a-block with exceptions to those rules, including if you
look at the shed, there's a little projection on the west side that actually goes out over Foss
Creek. The city staff said, oh, that's a no-no, but the planning commission and this wisdom said
it's fine, it looks fine, it's not going to hurt the drainage, it's not going to hurt any flood
issues, and so it's a good design. So one of the things that would help accomplish a lot of
the issues would be to move these buildings west basically and south and deal with a lot of the
scale and bulk issues by just moving them farther from the street. In particular, I would like,
if you take a look at the sheet C2, you'll see four X's on the Grove Street side of it,
and they all amount to trees that are to be taken out, including that redwood on the corner
and then three deciduous trees that go down.
Down Grove Street. Leaving all those trees in place would, to me, do a tremendous effect
on not reducing the scale of buildings, but reducing the way the buildings look and feel.
And so from my perspective, I would like, when this thing comes around again, I'd like to
see a plan that is approved by our city arborists that preserves each of those four trees. Most
of it would, I think, be accomplished by moving the buildings to the west, and that would help
with the scale, but I would not be in a position to accept the scale of these buildings unless
those trees are preserved. With regard to Tom's traffic issue, I agree that it's a problem.
I think if we could solve it by having the driveway on West Grant, I know that's going
to amount to some other retaining walls and re-jiggering things, but again, there's plenty
of land over there. I am not a fan of keeping what sort of a swamp and a kind of a place
for, as you said, blackberries and a whole bunch of other kind of nondescript plants.
This is not a biological preserve that to me is important to preserve, and if we could
get a driveway that solves the problem, that would be fine. The other thing, Tom,
that I would do if we can't do that is I'd put a condition in the final approvals that
say that if the city public works head thinks that that left turn is a problem, that we
mandate that the traffic coming out of that project be right turn only. That still leaves
a problem with Foss Creek Circle and the driveway. I could see that ultimately being solved by
making Foss Creek Circle one way. If any of you remember L label, L would turn over in
his grave if that were the choice, but we could think of doing that. The best solution
to me would be to have the entrance on Grove Street. The only other, I basically, I like
the architecture. Jonathan, I don't know how you reduce that southern building without reducing
the square footage dramatically. I'd like to, but if that can be done, it would be great.
Each of these residents already have balconies. If we could do something to clean up the roof
line or change the roof line, that would be a good thing to do. I don't think it's
necessary to have rooftop kind of terraces the way this thing has. I think people can deal with
their own balconies. The balconies are fine. They look to the west, which is great. They're
fine. I think the last technical comment I'd have is that the windows, particularly the windows
that face Grove Street, I think they're shown in the elevations. There are some brown walls
and there are some gray walls. In each case, the windows are just little kind of, I'd call
them nondescript. They don't have much in the way of indentations, at least as far as
you can see on these things. They have nothing in the way of framing. It looks like, as
someone correctly pointed out, it looks like the back of the building and anything we could do to
make it more inviting, make it look not like the front of a building, but a much more
architecturally thoughtful building would help. I think going to Jonathan's point,
the entryway where the garbage is should be a much more intentional entryway to help
break up those two buildings and separate them out. That's kind of where I am.
Can I ask a quick technical question? We keep talking about setbacks. I see that the
setback along Grove Street is only 10 feet. Why wouldn't you need a variance for that?
Even in ORM, it's 20 feet. In the Grove Street plan, it says 30 feet. Why is 10 feet okay?
That's the street side yard. The front is considered west grid. Why isn't it 15 feet
if you have a three-story element there? Because it should be 15 feet in the center.
No, because that's for an interior lot, the 15 feet. This is a street side yard of a corner lot.
Okay. All righty. I know our job tonight is to give you some clarity for when you come back,
so I'm hoping I can condense my notes here. I'll try to take it one bucket at a time.
In terms of the design, I think we've hammered some of those points home.
You've already heard from the community that while it may comply, it feels big. I'll leave
it to your team to find ways with comments from the rest of the commission to possibly address that.
I did just want to take a moment to... I think it's so easy during workshops and meetings to
focus on all the things you want to change. I do just want to take a quick moment to
sort of appreciate what I see as a good faith attempt. It's not a little things,
but like the stamped concrete with the willow, right? Some of our design guidelines and
area plan specifically call for incorporating art into that. While there may be a conflict
using concrete, I appreciate the attempt there with things like that. It's walkable,
it's bikeable. You clearly have an eye towards sustainability throughout.
I guess I want to spend a little more time on the habitat preservation area
and the heritage tree removal. I guess I'm still a little unclear on the need and intent around
modifying that area. It seems to me that I understand the driveway width for emergency
vehicle access. It also seems like Unit 1, there may just be a little sliver of Unit 1 that would
otherwise be in the existing HPA. I understand that, but generally curious, again, back to my
original question about orientation. If any other orientation was considered such that
you didn't need to change that, just again as we're in this conceptual phase.
In terms of approving that modification request, one of the points talks about
specifically no significant or adverse impact on heritage-sized trees. Of course, we understand
that, for example, tree number 22 is healthy and it is in the existing HPA but would not
be in the proposed HPA and would be slated for removal. I just wanted to echo what
Commissioner Lux said about, especially with tree number 8, I believe it is the redwood.
I think that tree in particular, given it's a healthy redwood, could help and be in your favor
in terms of helping to the perceived mass at that corner. It's already a very tall tree.
I'd be curious to work more with the arborist around the critical root zone. We talked about
to what extent can you cut those roots without risking stability and therefore safety for residents,
pedestrians, that sort of thing. Then just a general comment on our heritage tree removal
process. I want to be really cautious that just because we have a process to mitigate that at
3 to 1, and I appreciate that, I don't want to set the precedent that that's always the
default process. I would ask for a good faith attempt again to preserve those trees where possible.
Alex, I'd like to point out that many people in town have been critical of the ineffectiveness
of the heritage tree removal statute. I think there's been attempts to put more teeth in it.
Thank you for that.
All right. I guess wrapping up what I had,
I think those are the main points for now. Also, just again, I want to thank the public
and residents for being here and voicing your concerns. It's great to see the room filled,
and I hope you'll continue to engage in the process as this moves along. Thank you.
First of all, I just want to thank the applicant and Jeff for your time tonight
in the presentation. I appreciate it. The first note I wrote down and then you actually said it
is you took on a challenging lot. So it's one thing we agree, first of all, we agree on that.
And I empathize with you very much that it is a challenging lot with a lot of hurdles
and it's wonderful that you're going to possibly work with us on that. And I also find the building
a very attractive content for a design. With that said, a couple of things for you. The comment
you made about many buildings on Grove Street neighborhood are 2,000 to 6,000 square foot
residences. They are, but they're set back way on the street universally. If you're going to
stick with the flat roof, I don't think the elevations are doing you justice with like set
back. You've put them as far back on the building as possible, but in the elevations it looks like
they're right there. Maybe you could show it more artistically. And I concur with another fellow
commissioner about maybe removing some of the shade structures, trellises and stuff just
to like lower the massing up there for you. For the amount of square footage you're getting,
it just looks like a heck of a lot more than the square footage that is designated that floor.
In addition, I really would like to see every effort made for that redwood tree in the corner.
I understand it may be slightly above grade, maybe an elevated planter with a bench built
in, like celebrate it versus destroying it. I concur with my fellow commissioners out of the
Perlman and considering the landscape, I appreciate Commissioner Lux for always giving us a history
lesson. And I agree with his and anything that you could do to move the structures further
back, even though it may require variance, I would also be in support of that. I think
that is what you said, Commissioner Lux. And I am also, if there's any way you can work with
egress off of West Grant and move the buildings around to have the egress off of West Grant,
I just think it would be something else I would like to see. In regards to staff,
I don't know if it's anyone else's feeling, but in regards to condo building like this,
multiple units, I found the citywide design guidelines chapter six to be
not super helpful. It was kind of like, all right, what do I do? I didn't feel like I had guardrails
in place, to be honest with you. So if I am deferring to the Grove Street neighborhood
stuff, this specific lot also has very little information given, but then it seems in the
language to defer to the West Grant Grove Street district, there's language in there where it's
kind of like, in what in doubt, refer to this. So you might want to look at that. And then
if you're looking at that language, there's a lot of information given as far as like simple
design features including porches, bay windows, trellises found in older homes. And then
there's even language about an HD overlay for historic district, which is also kind of vague.
So it just it brought up more questions and it did answers for me.
That's all I have. Thank you for your time. Thank you.
I like going last because all the good stuff gets said and I don't have to talk for too long.
I think first and foremost I'll kind of reiterate what I said about kind of what
Commissioner Barber was just talking about with the discrepancy between the
is it in the plan? Is it not in the plan? What's the zoning? What the development standards? I
think that's kind of like a baseline that I'd like to kind of see sorted out.
But yeah, I think the architecture is modern and attractive. It's massive as we've heard. So
not an architect, but I think we've gotten some good suggestions on how to
kind of massage that side. I'd also think I mean it looks like the back of the building because
in many cases it is the back of the building. The southwest facing balconies and architecture
and windows and all that stuff is
Something that I would like to see on the community facing side.
It gives kind of like a closed exclusive courtyard, which I think in addition to the massing it's just
it's a little bit of a, it's a hard pill to swallow I think for this neighborhood as we've heard.
As far as the habitat thing and moving down, I think a give and take on habitat biology things
is good. I think we have a reputable study here that says you know it might have been recorded at
the time of the subdivision map. It doesn't seem like there's anything there for one reason or another.
If we're giving some on the habitat conservation area, we could potentially as
Commissioner Locke suggested move the houses down which solves the massing problem.
I think saving that tree and the bench idea is a fantastic idea. I think the tree
all those trees on Grove would solve a lot of the issues with massing as was mentioned.
And then yeah, I don't, I think it's probably a longer conversation with public works in the
city about the West Grant ingress egress. I think the as a kind of a last resort having a
write out would be good for the neighborhood and the circulation in the neighborhood. I think
if I was a resident there and I saw a write out only I would look around for cops and just take a
left anyway. So I think if we want to use that as a as a tool or tool belt, there's probably
longer conversation about some sort of design to discourage that. I think that is about it.
Yeah, I think just finally reiterating, it'd be great to have a very defined and clear project
description about what entitlements are needed, what development standards that we were viewing
this project against. Like I said, that's kind of a, I think a baseline assumption that I
would have looking at this project for a map and design review and all the other entitlements
that may or may not be needed at this point. Does anybody else on the commission have any
final comments? Yeah, I'd like to address mostly the people who live in the neighborhood.
I think you've heard that we understand your concerns. We propose some possible ways to address
them. Hopefully they will be addressed. But I think it's clear to me that if this project
proceeds and basically the form it is, it's going to be a big project. And I'd just like to remind
everybody that Heelsburg has lots of lots of places all throughout throughout the community
where single family houses are chock-a-block next to four plexes and eight plexes.
I live in a house that's five feet from a two and a half story house right next to me.
That's the way the city is. And I think that that this is not in the middle of the Grove
Street neighborhood. It's on the edge. It is a transition area. You can go south on Grove
Street all the way to the to the roundabout and not see a single family residence on the right
hand side. It's just right on the edge. And so some relatively big building, I think,
makes sense. So I think that if the developer can do something here, that would be great. But
I wouldn't hold my breath in saying it's going to look like the same thing as if there were just
two or three single family houses on that lot. It's just, I think the city is different in
that respect. You've heard a mouthful, I know. And I'm wondering if I can get a minute with the
architect or the designer after we're done because I have some thoughts that might help if they're
worth it. I would say that the Grove Street neighborhood plan has lots of text about design.
And again, it doesn't have to be historic, but things like Gable Roos and things like Bay
Windows, you know, don't have to be historic looking. But I think you could get a lot out of
taking another, just another pass at reading those design guidelines. Because while it is a
transitional site, that corner has three historic houses right there. And then all of a sudden,
you've got something that to me now kind of looks like an office building. So, and it doesn't have
to. It doesn't have to at all. But I think if you could grab some of those kind of character
features and incorporate them in a way that still is quite modern, because modern does not
necessarily mean flat roof. I mean, flat roof necessarily means modern, but modern doesn't
necessarily mean flat roof. So, and even in the guidelines, it says flat roofs are discouraged.
So again, it's just, I think there's so many ways to get as much square footage and to,
you know, do a building, but to soften it in a way that really respects the neighbors,
you know, the neighborhood. I mean, the neighbors are the people who live in the neighborhood,
but the physical neighborhood. And I think there are ways to do that. And I think the
Grove Street plan has everything you need to help you kind of transition to something that would
be more acceptable to the community. Any final parting thoughts? Okay, I do want to allow
the members of the public to give another little comment if you'd like. Generally, for public
hearings we don't, we just do one public comment session, but because this is a workshop and maybe
you've been sitting there and thinking about new ideas or solutions as we've talked about
gable roofs and these types of things. Just want to make sure everybody feels like
they've had the opportunity to express themselves.
Please approach the podium.
I just have a question. Assuming there is another set of drawings and a different proposal,
how will those of us who were here today be notified of that so that we can take another look?
Great. Thanks. That is a great question for staff.
Some of that depends on the applicant. They could, as others have done, take all this
feedback and put together a revised set of plans and submit a formal application.
They could do the same. And if it's significantly different and they wanted the
benefit of additional input from the commission, they could schedule another workshop
or they could certainly do what they had done prior to this evening and hold a neighborhood
meeting that allows the neighbors to see and hear what changes they have or haven't made in response.
Great. Thank you. Would anybody else like to make a final public comment?
Okay. Does the applicant feel like you've received enough of our feedback for the night?
A final comment from our group. First of all, thank you for your feedback.
It's instructive. And I think the conflicts in the... We've attempted to bring together all of the
different documents that govern the development of this site. We have honestly made an
honest attempt at doing that. And we're not... I'm not trying to create a structure here that
exceeds the height. We understand the setback problem. We understand the massing problem,
the height problem. We try to get a building that fit the height, even though it's taller
on the street, part that you actually see certainly satisfies the requirements.
And if you look around the neighborhood, if you look at the documents that are in
the planning document, Queen Anne's and Craftsman and all of the various styles you see
in the historic district, there's maybe a total of 10 buildings, maybe, that satisfy those
requirements. And all the other buildings are some other variation. You go to the industrial side,
you go to the winery, you go to the new ones up on Grove. They're all very different.
And they don't meet... I mean, you look across the street and you look at a 30-foot
setback. Those homes look beautiful. And I totally agree with you. In a historic area,
and you have a 30-foot setback, it's wonderful. But if I go across the street to the Grove
Lofts, for example, there's a 30-foot setback, but it's a paved parking lot. So how is that
consistent with the design guidelines for the Grove Street? I mean, the Grove Street,
the Grove Neighborhood Plan. So there's a lot of inconsistency. And I'm not here to say,
you know, that's wrong, that's ugly, and that's whatever. That's not my purpose here.
I wanted to present a solution that Healdsburg could be proud of and that would be happy
to have in their community and will certainly take into consideration the public's and the
neighbors. I mean, we're going to be a neighbor. So I'm certainly sensitive to that. So we'll
definitely take that into account. We'll consider what has been said. And we'll see what we can do
to mitigate some of the concerns. And again, I would like to thank the commissioners for
their time. And I'd like to thank the public neighbors. Believe me, I'm a neighbor, so I get
it. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay, so that concludes our workshop. We don't have any, there's
no director's report or anything in the thing or, okay, cool. Well, then we are adjourned. Thank
you, everybody.
Thank you.