>> Thank you for standing up.
Okay.
So Spanish translation available.
And town clerk, will you please take roll call?
>> Thank you vice mayor.
Yes.
Council member salmon?
Council member leap?
Council member Wahl? (inaudible) mayor is currently absent.
Do planning Commission roll call.
[calling roll]
>> Thank you.
Next we will move to the Pledge of Allegiance.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States
of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation
under God indivisible with liberty --
we are moving on to agenda item number five,
conflict of interest declarations.
Any conflict of interest to declare?
She is excusing herself due to the --
residence and anyone from the Planning Commission have
a conflict of interest to declare?
Okay.
We are going to be holding public comment after we have
our -- and only comments --
I'll read that afterwards.
We're going to handle public comment
after we do the stationary and plan updates.
We'll go to item 7.1 and I will ask --
Ask Community Director to please introduce and give
the presentation.
>> Thank you Vice mayor. (inaudible)
>> Thank you vice Mayor and members of the Council
and members of the Planning Commission.
Director and we are here today for a special joint meeting
to have a workshop session on the area plan
update for the town of Windsor.
We already have a stationary plan and this is a grant funded
initiative to bring -- it's a grant provided by MTC
governments for the cities in the Bay area.
It's kind of a regional planning agency.
They have a new transit oriented communities and this grant
funding -- our stationary plan, mind with those transit oriented
communities.
There's no action associated with this item.
This is just informational session
where we can describe the plan and the update
and get feedback from our decision
makers and the community.
That said, there's not a specific parcel or project
that is under consideration.
This is the entirety of the station area.
Not the stationary plan which I've heard several times
mentioned.
It's the station area which is essentially walking distance --
the smart station so it's generally about a half mile
radius around that transit hub.
And so we've got to the maps.
This is an example -- this is what the current boundaries are
of the station area.
One of the things we're considering as part of this
update are these boundaries -- (inaudible) downtown
for Windsor.
We've got some good feedback so far
and we encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts on what
the station area actually looks like geographically.
It's a visioning document and so these are our long range goals.
Part of the project is to determine
what's our existing conditions.
What's in the original plan and what's working?
What needs to be revised?
One of the elements that I point to
often is an over of office space and at the original time
downtowns were a great place to have lots of office floor area.
That's not the environment now so we need to bring this plan up
to date and reflect what actually
are the conditions and more importantly, what
do we want Windsor to look like in the coming decades.
It is a decades long plan we're working on here.
Not to say it's set in stone.
It could be amended over time as new information presents itself
but we have a great opportunity to open it
up and take a look at what's working and what we want to see.
I think with that we'll go to our next slide, which
talks about that original plan itself.
I will take this opportunity to introduce Kate.
Juice with Perkins Eastman, a planning consultant firm working
with the town that's working with this project.
>> (inaudible)
>> Hi everyone.
Nice to see you again.
My name is Kate and I'm a planner and urban designer.
I have been working in the transit land
use integration space my entire career,
which is now about 20 years.
So today I'm going to walk you through the scope
of the stationary plan, why we are doing it now.
I'll put some questions out there
for you all to think about and also
just do a little bit of onboarding and making
sure everyone understands what the TOD concepts are about.
That's the slide here.
I like this because it really helps us think about how,
and station areas or transit and land use type
places where you have access to rapid transit,
you can make some different choices
than you would in other places.
That's pretty common sense.
But actually there's lots of statistics that prove that out.
This here is this idea of thinking about feet first,
as we do our land use and circulation
plans and the stationary plan.
You're already starting from a great baseline.
This slide -- it gets you in the mindset of how we make choices
depending on where we live and what that place is like.
Starting around the 1:00, it's thinking about diversity of land
uses.
You already have that in your stationary plan.
You have a lot of mixed use land use zoning.
What does that mean?
You choose to stay in your neighborhood.
The next one around the 3:00 is I enjoy small blocks,
safe crossings common things to see, shade and benches.
That's design quality.
Moving around clockwise, this notion of density --
why do we care about density in these places?
We have a lot of different people in our community
we're trying to support.
That's the diversity of housing.
You might have smaller apartments
and you might have students or seniors
come of people who want to live in a studio without a car.
We know about a third of the U.S.
Population doesn't have access to a vehicle,
which is something that and moving around,
demand management --
and idea of making driving or thinking about how driving
is actually a less convenient mobility choice than walking.
We have distance to transit and that's
a quick walk or ride to a station and lastly, destination
accessibility.
That's this notion of hey comments right here.
I don't have to drive.
These are conditions we think about when we
are doing stationary planning.
The next slide, as we already mentioned,
you have a 2013 stationary plan and this is the zoning from it.
If you're not familiar, the purple area
is your most mixed use town center.
There's various overlays that emphasize different uses
throughout the stationary plan.
There was a focus when this was done
on more compact and walkable types of development which
is great.
We also know, and you all hear --
some of these bigger sites com the key sites still
haven't developed 15 years on.
We want to question why.
The next slide is the circulation side.
We'll talk about both of these --
the land use and design and circulation.
We'll think about those more as a pair.
This is your circulation plan.
It's been a while.
This listed out a whole bunch of different projects
that were top of mind at the time.
Remember, this is before the train station opened.
It's way back.
I think 2011 is when you did most of the work
and it was adopted in 2013 and adopted in 2012
and amended in 2013.
So we now know more and now we're
thinking about the next extension.
The Healdsburg extension of the smart train.
Some projects listed in the old plan are already done
or you've already funded them or they are underway.
One of the things that it did -- for you all to think about this
next round is it really identified the old Redwood
Highway and Pedestrianization and that went through a whole
planning process and instigated some of the other plans that
you've done in the interim period.
That's one of the things stationary plans are good at.
They can identify the overall emphasis or priority
that the town wants to see and there's
a series of implementation actions or plans
that emerge from this plan, if that makes sense.
So I did a review of the guiding principles
and these are in the document.
This is a reminder.
You have them in your packet.
I called out in blue some of those elements that
really spoke to me about what the plan is trying to do.
A lot of them are really relevant.
We're starting at a good baseline but on the side there,
for you all to think about in our discussion as we move
forward, it is a sense of --
is a downtown doing what we want it to do?
What are the outcomes?
What are the tools we have available to us?
At the public sector, we can't do everything
but we can put in place at least visions, regulation,
process to really help us achieve our aims.
We can think through programs, about public realm investments.
We can think about parking and we
can think about multimodal and transit priority
in the downtown.
So Patrick already went through some of this.
I assume some of you are familiar with what's
on this slide.
I'll walk through it on a high level.
One of the reasons it's happening now
is Windsor got a grant and they got a grant from MTC.
MTC has been working on consistency and areas
where we are as a population, as a region making
a lot of investment in our transit infrastructure.
So Windsor has a station.
It's documented as a tier four emerging urban district which
means there are certain policy measures they would
like to see towns and cities meet,
be consistent with those ideas.
Windsor is already doing really well.
You have already met many of those policies.
There's a few areas that you could address and refine
and what that does is it maximizes
your chance for discretionary funding between 1 and $2 million
to do other things the town would like to see in the future.
The other policy that's come through that MTC is working on
is something called the transit Priority Policy for roadways
and that's new.
It was adopted in February of this year and all that does
is it encourages jurisdictions, yourselves
to be partners with your local transit agencies.
So that is signal transit and smart.
And the reason to do that now is because you actually
have transit agencies rethinking their operations now
that you have the smart train completed.
You have the Windsor extension funded
and they are thinking about how best to service these existing
spots.
They're going to already be thinking
through some operational changes and they also
have different ways that they want to encourage you and fund
better access to that station.
We can have a conversation at this point
to help recommend what the town would like to see
and how to better collaborate with the transit agency
partners.
On the other side, this is just documenting
all the things that have changed in California since 2012.
I'm sure you're aware we have a housing
crisis in the state of California
has been active passing legislation
to encourage new housing.
This allows us to do some refinements
and update the stationary plan to your existing design
standards that are already adopted.
They haven't been tested or used in the downtown.
You haven't had any multifamily development actually be built
since the odds were written and the ODS and stationary plan
design standards aren't --
it was never really a full reconciliation.
This allows us to do that.
And lastly, AB2097, another state law
that removes parking minimums within a half mile of transit
stations.
This is an opportunity to relook at parking,
think about how to implement that state law
and introduce new management tools
so we can see active turnover in parking spaces downtown.
So what this also does is it helps you think
about the categories of change.
We have the density and land use.
We have the circulation associated
with transit agencies.
And we have parking.
It's these three streams that will all work together.
So this slide -- you can have a look at it.
This is a report card as it were and this is how
MTC will look at consistency.
They're not using the term compliance anymore.
Consistency is more of a gentle term
as it were, because what they're trying to do
is encourage through incentive program jurisdictions
to pay attention to those three buckets,
to think about how do we get more people,
more access to transit.
So we did an early scan of Windsor's ability
to be consistent and again, you guys
are doing well with the existing stationary plan
and we see without a huge overhaul of the stationary plan,
you would be consistent in each of these different categories
and we are seeking 88 points.
To win consistency you need a minimum of 85 points.
This is good.
I actually just did a project in Fairfield
to give you an example of.
They did not comply.
It was very difficult to get there
but ultimately it wasn't going to work
for a variety of different reasons.
Windsor is in a different situation,
so just so you know, this is going to be a different exercise
and it is going to be a different exercise
for every jurisdiction.
I think Petaluma is working on this right now.
There's a variety of different grants going out
across the nine county region.
You're looking at a host of different jurisdictions,
trying to address these challenges
in their own unique ways.
Again, whoops -- here is the TOC area the MTC is using.
I already went through some of this.
This is about coordinating with smart and the STC,
thinking through how best to make use of that.
Here's a little map showing you and some of our information
gathering -- we're starting to learn more about your Emily Rose
parking lot and the existing smart parking lot
in the roundabout and some of the changes going on.
We've had some interview sessions with the partners
already and we are hearing a lot of interesting collaborating --
we're hearing a lot from folks that they just want to make --
to optimize the lot to make it clear about how to get
to downtown, thinking through bike access and multimodal
access.
There's a lot we can do to be thinking through how to optimize
this location right here.
And the next slide is looking at the parking consistency.
As you remember on the report card
there was the parking area or the parking work stream
as it were.
So here we are working through how do we return and make
use of some of the work that Windsor has already done.
I don't know if this group is aware
but you have a parking recommendation study
done in 2020 and that was done by some consultants and also
Nygaard, who came in before the station opened and gave you
a host of different choices and policy recommendations of how
to manage parking downtown once the station opened.
Some of those recommendations have been implemented and some
haven't.
This is an opportunity to revisit that
and our work scope does include more data collections,
specifically at the Emily Rose lot, where
we can get better information on who is using the lot, how often,
looking at ridership and projections and the smart train
as well as using some of the best practices that
are coming through both MTC and Sonoma County
climate and Transit Authority on how to better manage parking.
On this slide there's a list of the different potential
strategies that might be included during the process
and these are things will prefer express with your team and staff
and we'll be able to give you more information.
Probably of the four different categories with MTC,
parking has some of the most -- we can make more changes there
because of AB2097 and because we could update your ordinance
as well as introduce some minor shifts to how you calculate
shared parking and transportation demand
management.
And lastly, towns are not static.
You've done a lot of work since 2012.
This gives an opportunity to update and coordinate
the stationary plan with a lot of these plans that have already
happened.
The general plan for example got updated in the interim.
You've got the Complete Streets policy
that's currently being updated, the Vision Zero Action Plan.
This is best practices happening now.
You have the active transportation plan
that was just updated this past year.
Connecting central Windsor plan --
which is over of 101 and the upgrades to Windsor River road
-- the old highway implementation where we are now,
wherever you want to go with that.
And the economic Development Strategic plan --
updated resilient water and -- that are now coming to bear
and again, the design standards.
With that I'm going to pause and see if anyone has questions.
Go ahead. >>With AB2097 is talking about parking
and transit locations, is transit location defined
in terms of one bus stop --
>> Can you use the microphone please?
So the audience -- >> The question was about clarification
on AB2097 the definition of a transit location because I
imagine the systems or train systems that are small
don't have the same requirements and Windsor is still --
between smart and SAT, it doesn't seem to make sense that
we would have the same parking standards as the bigger
municipalities or other more developed transit --
similar to MTC, it's a tiered approach and only applicable
to the half mile around your existing station.
Bus stations are not included.
>> The train station just being present,
regardless of ridership, is considered a transit location,
the same as a Bart station?
It's a tiered approach. (inaudible)
>> No minimum parking requirements.
Yeah, you can still have maximums
or you can have market based standards.
There are exceptions.
>> No minimum?
Does that mean you don't have to have a parking space for each --
>> Correct.
>> That's the same for tier 4.
And the location we're working with, yes.
One of the things to think through
is no developer wants to build a unit that's not marketable.
This tries to move more towards a market based standards
and like I said, there's -- the rule in 2097.
It's not something that is across the board for every
single -- you've already implemented 2097.
In the town of Windsor.
What we're going to do is refine that
and make sure the codes are up to date with the best practice.
>> So the way consultants work, is first things we try to do is
understand what problem we are trying to solve.
We try to learn as much as we can about your town
and about your challenges and also about your opportunities.
We got started this spring, I think in April, March.
And we really started to do what we call information gathering.
When we do that we talk one on one.
We do small group workshops and talk to your group
and go on tours.
We do our micro scan and look at your buyer ship.
We collect all the information and that's
what we are doing right now.
One of the things we did when we started out
was this walk audit where we had about 25 residents and some
of you here today come up we developed a route
and we did really a human scale look at what it's
like to walk to and from the station on a variety of routes.
And that's really about experiencing life
at a walking pace.
And thinking about small scale interventions,
like benches and shade and accessibility,
where crosswalks are and where they aren't.
What's been included in the act transportation plan
and what hasn't been.
A lot of what we talked about there,
and there were a lot of themes that emerged,
was about signage and wayfinding, accessibility
and trying to show the world how it is that they can access
the best parts of Windsor from the station,
and thinking about engagement and activation
of the public realm.
You can see here we've done a little bit of analysis
on the findings and all the comments
and you can see that generally it's very positive.
That's the green.
And where there's some marginal negative,
that is on the location of amenities.
So really, this notion you'll hear a fair amount from me
tonight is this idea of activation.
Like I said, we are in the process
of information gathering.
One of the things we're trying to do a better job at
is broaden the number of people we talk
to during planning exercises.
You all are here.
You're invited and your decision makers.
We also want to be engaging with the broader population
and as you know that can be difficult.
One of the things we are trying out, and staff has been great,
is something we are calling intercept surveys.
Maybe you've seen some of these around.
They are short questionnaires that
ask simple questions to try to get people engaged,
to give us their first take on downtown.
That can help us broaden our reach.
It can also educate people that the SAP is happening
and what it is and give it a temperature check of how people
are feeling about downtown.
We have about 160 responses so far
and this intercept survey will be out through September
and we'll be able to add to that every time we
get a new batch of information.
Staff has been great in taking those out.
Maybe some of you here want to help us
with The intercept survey over the next month,
because it's a great time.
We have lots of events in Windsor
to start to see how people are feeling about it.
Some of the basic questions we have --
we've been asking basic demographics, age of residents,
how they got to where they are.
You can see in the pie charts for the first 160
and how welcoming and engaging does downtown
feel to you right now.
Good news, generally people are pretty positive.
On a scale of 1 to 5 it is average, 4.56.
We also made a fun word cloud that I
think is representative of a lot of comments
and maybe some of the thoughts you have
while you're looking at it.
You can see ice cream a lot and restaurants and social summer,
green Baskin-Robbins -- so I think this can help us --
we'll see how this changes over time as we get more.
And right now there's senior activities
and some other social events where they
were asking these questions.
This is a good way to do a temperature check
and we have the full comments as well made available.
>> I believe we have some intercept surveys here tonight
too if you want to fill that out.
>> Go fill them out.
>> We are trying to categorize them based on --
we ask one question of like what would be the one thing you would
want to see to improve downtown, and this slide shows you those
early answers.
The top here is new and extended uses.
So longer hours, more variety of activities,
and we have a public realm upgrades.
And not everybody is responding.
You can see that one.
No response.
We have some others that are Uncategorizable
and some mobility improvements.
This will change over time.
It's pretty interesting place to start.
The other thing we did was we did hold an informal discussion
on July 20th, 2.5 hours.
Most people stayed for all 2.5 hours.
I think people had a good time.
The purpose of that meeting was to review
what is a SAP, what are we doing, asking
key questions about downtown, those themes we talked about,
that activation density and land use theme and then
the circulation parking and transportation theme.
So we got people thinking about both of those
and collected those comments.
We had about 40 or 50 attendees.
And at the end we tried to ask a question about people's top
priority, top project for Windsor and again,
here you can see focusing on a kind of --
oops -- activation with live music and entertainment winning
out over the bookstore/bar.
So this was a fun exercise.
Obviously not everybody was able to participate
but lots of commonalities.
One of the things we like to do as we get started with a project
is look at other places and try to get some inspiration
and see how you guys respond to those things.
The next set of slides goes through lessons
from other places that we think are
exciting or interesting common things that
might be relevant to think about as we move forward with the SAP.
Another piece that I want to do some baseline with the group
here is thinking about this slide, which
I shared at the community workshop as a way
to kind of think about the purpose of a downtown.
I think this slide helps -- it's kind of a time scale that starts
way long ago on the left and we moved into modernity
on the right.
And if we think about what downtowns
were for when we originally built our cities,
they were necessary.
They were for trade, for meeting and for a living
and where you essentially went for your economic activity.
And now post COVID with cars and mobility, with COVID and work
from home, the purpose of a downtown
has essentially shifted.
And we are seeing that in trends in this country and many
as we have to rethink how to engage
and what is the purpose of a downtown.
One of the things for shorthand we can call about --
we can call it is it went from a necessary activity
to an optional activity.
And that's where we want to think about downtown
as being a place where people will
go when the quality is high.
We want to think of how we attract people to that downtown
because we're actually competing with a lot of other destinations
and with retail environments we are competing with --.
This slide is from a professor in public realm in Copenhagen
and he uses this when he's trying to think through
how do we reorient downtown places away from car use,
more into public space and environments.
So I took this and then I started thinking about okay,
well, hearing these notions about activation and downtown,
can we think about downtown as being
a haven, a hangout or a hub or a place for hobbies?
And these are some images, some places that fit --
immersive experience and environments to where people go
and bring their kids.
An example of that is -- in Vegas.
There's another one in Southern California in Palm Springs.
There's bubble Planet, and Washington is not a large city
but it does have these kids environment
of people going and spending time and having
an immersive experience and there's all the things
that happen around that place.
These are private or nonprofit led
programs and repurposed spaces.
On the bottom that's more of an investment
in the quality of your public environment
and Windsor already has a beautiful town green
but there's more that could be done
to activate those locations.
Those are public led programs and spaces, so thinking
about your streets and park environment,
how they operate and function, improving things
like movable seating or shade and also art experiences.
We heard a lot about art at our workshop,
and thinking through how do we engage with the community
to bring people out and let them know what Windsor is about
and provide creative outlets even for the residents who
live here?
So some examples of other locations that kind of fit
the bill, and I can run through these pretty quickly --
I'll show you the image of the development and then we'll do
a scale comparison that essentially shows the place --
there's an outline of it -- when it's dropped just on top
of Windsor.
So you can see what does that really mean in our environment?
This first one is Paso Robles.
This is called Market Walk and it's about 16,000ft² of mixed
use.
It was done by a private developers and there's 12 small
format local businesses, two anchor restaurants and a wine
and blending --
bike rentals and six suites.
Not a lot of lodging but popular as well as
seasonal events and live music.
Here's another image of that.
You can see the scale and how it relates to the street.
There's some adaptive for use involved.
And one of the things that's interesting about
that one is it's actually been occupied and stable since 2020.
So bringing in tax revenue and has been quite popular.
This next one that's pretty interesting
is reading Public Market.
I'm not sure if you all are familiar.
This one just opened in 2025 and it was a big project
that the city of Reading used as a catalyst for their downtown
reinvention.
They are in a different situation
obviously than Windsor.
This is a downtown that was anchored by a disused wall.
They had to get them all, then break it up
to introduce streets.
The way they did that was through this public investment
of a market and affordable housing
which you can see on the left.
And they were able to attract a whole bunch of external funding
for this project, more than 30 million
in grants to help get this done.
It just opened this past year.
So that's worth taking a look.
Here's a scale comparison showing those two projects.
You can see -- whoops -- so you can see that here.
The Paso Robles market block, the reading public market,
and all the way on the right is just sort of
dropped on the McClellan hotel site.
The next project I wanted to show
is this one that is pretty interesting.
It's River Street San Juan Capistrano.
This is again a private market --
this one kind of activates using the agricultural template,
so thinking about this as a rule and agricultural community,
so it focuses on a food hall, at sit down restaurants,
similar specialty retail but it brings in more of a parallel
lifestyle, boutique fitness and wellness and some seasonal
events and music events.
And it has a sequence of adaptable, low cost buildings
that are arrayed around a public space.
Here's another view into that project.
And here is a little scale of comparison.
One more project more local that would be easy to visit --
not sure if folks are familiar with the barn and Sacramento.
This is an interesting project that was really done as kind
of a catalyst for West Sacramento and similar --
this was done pre-pandemic and it had some challenges during
the pandemic but it survived.
It really focuses more on the iconic architecture
that's quite small.
You can see that it's a fully sustainable and mass timbered --
it is essentially like a kiosk but it's iconic and then it has
a series of fire pits and different event space around it.
And it's an events venue here.
It's been quite popular.
And Drake's is actually a brewery
based in my town in Oakland.
One of the things that happened here is as an anchor for a mixed
use project that was entitled, similar to what you see here
in Windsor, six years ago -- it's only moving forward now
with townhouses and an apartment building.
Windsor is in good company with some
of the projects that get delayed as the market shifts
and you start to see the changes happen.
Here's the scale comparison.
You can see the barn here on the river
and it's a pretty small actual site
that is just dropped on top of where we are right now.
One more that may be familiar to some of you
is another wine city in Paso Robles again.
That is just the Tin City.
This is a series of small purveyors,
small affordable buildings that are spread
around a centralized idea, very walkable and accessible
to the community.
It's been very organic and its growth over time and again,
it's about four blocks -- so you can see that there.
And I think one of the things just to remember,
those who haven't been reading the plan recently,
is that you do have a series of active policies in the plan
around mix of uses, around hospitality, engagement --
there's an entertainment district overlay,
a whole host of different things directing us to think about how
do we activate and engage?
This is one of the policies I just pulled from the plan
and that gives me a question of hospitality, what type
and how much?
And one more example for you in terms
of the market scan and thinking about trends here in Sonoma
is this idea of outdoor active.
I wanted to just talk about a building
that I am friends with the person who developed it, which
was for Brooks running shoes.
What's interesting about this project
is that Brooks had been located outside of the city of Seattle
and they made a clear decision that they wanted
to be closer to people who really run
and recreational runners.
So they were the anchor tenants for this building on Stoneway
that is near the running and biking trail in Seattle.
They've created a whole community around running.
It's been an interesting thing to watch.
It's similar to bike oriented development
and it's this move in wellness and trail oriented development
and I think there's a lot of attributes of Windsor
that might make something like this make sense here.
And so I'll pause and just a minutes.
What are we doing now?
As I mentioned, we've been collecting all this information
and we're looking at parking, development
pipeline, your codes, we're doing a market scan.
And so the next steps are really about aligning
with those consistency measures but also really taking
the time to start to creatively solve
for some of these challenges.
So that means we kind of end our information gathering phase
and we enter into our options phase
where we start to develop ideas and recommendations
and then we bring those back out to you all probably in the end
of the year, early next year.
So what we'll be looking at is thinking about activation,
thinking about specialized or experiential retail,
thinking about different ways that we
can make sure that the code isn't unnecessarily
tamping down the kind of activation
that the community wants.
We'll be thinking about the interaction
between your overlays, between your parking requirements,
administrative and discretionary controls,
so that's that one theme.
-- often done in parallel in a partnership with your transit
agencies.
Both Smart and Sonoma Transit.
And then this side -- (inaudible).
Essentially through -- concept.
And they will be as design ideas --
and what we'll extract from that is we'll kind of create some
recommendations on how we can improve things to better meet
the town's desired outcomes.
This is not intended to be a massive overhaul of your code.
And it's not intended to rezone the station area.
What really focuses on fixes and gaps.
So essentially making sure -- the SAP are working together
and are well coordinated.
A lot of the shoulds and discretionary language --
it's no longer going to pass the state housing law.
We want to prioritize some of the --
maybe widening the idea or refine the idea of what is
active use.
And we want to think about how to recalibrate
to provide some flexibility, to activate and help through how
to streamline the process.
We will do that through testing some of these key sites,
typical sites.
By that I mean basic lots in your town center
and compact residential zones to see what's working
and what's not working.
We have the opportunity to work closely with real estate
economists so we'll be able to look at programs
and see what's happening and give you
some information on what's happening
and what's working and not working.
With that, my part of the presentation is concluded
and we can move to questions.
I've got some questions here.
Or feel free to give us your comment.
>> Thank you so much for that presentation.
That was a lot to think about in one go.
Having the presentation, I'm going to bring it back
to the Council and planning Commission for any questions
you might have.
Does anyone want to start?
>> I'm assuming that --
I am assuming that those '05 or so projects that you looked
at, they were generally a little bit of housing,
mostly retail activities, restaurants -- in those,
how was parking accomplished or accommodated?
Do you happen to remember where parking was supplied in order
to make those function?
>> It's different on each site but each site does accommodate
its own parking.
I can give some information about that later.
I don't know off the top of my head.
>> In general, was it part of the site?
>> Correct.
>> Thank you.
And on the previous slide, the next steps -- it appears --
that one.
The diagonal striping includes (inaudible) the town hall that
we're sitting in -- the gym.
What does it mean potential test site as it relates to that area?
>> All it means is doing some test fits,
so thinking about what fits and what doesn't fit under
your zoning code.
>> We kind of went through -- >> Yep. (inaudible)
>> The other question, you have given us 6 or 7 examples
of development and other towns.
But the ones that we can see, the Barlow and Sebastopol,
Hillsborough, the development there --
those are ones that we could get a sense for and experience
and actually understand some of the problems that they have.
I'm having trouble -- y?
>> That's a great idea.
Happy to bring forward some more local examples,
if you have specific examples you want us to look at.
>> If we look at Hillsborough, they have more than what
you've shown in this.
>> More activity.
They have a plaza, hotels, a new covered area for events --
the Foley Center.
Yeah.
They just have it all.
It appears that that would be a better
example for us to look at because we can actually see it.
>> I did make a clear choice to stay away from Hillsborough
actually because I wanted to expand beyond what is right next
door.
And I know a lot of what is happening
in some of the other work we're doing
is comparing Windsor's fundamentals to Hillsborough.
I'm happy to bring in Hillsborough
and want to focus on specific projects rather
than overall area.
So like a hotel -- sure.
Commissioner?
I just want to share because I have been to the Redding --
>> We won't do questions right now or just questions.
>> I will share with what the parking looks like
in my experience, what else was in the surrounding area.
>> Go ahead.
>> He mentioned that -- this wasn't a time to look
at overhauling the zoning but one of the things we've seen
in 10 or 15 years since the plan is done --
when it comes to density and housing,
it's gone totally one direction and our current zoning exposes
us a little bit to overbuilding in these areas from what we are
planning.
Which may not have been the case ten years ago.
I get that limiting question through rezoning
would probably make us ineligible for some
of the funding you mentioned.
But this would be the time to look
at that if we wanted to put some speed
bumps in place for development.
>> It can be difficult to down zone but it certainly can be
discussed.
>> Any other questions?
I have a quick question about --
I don't remember what the wording is,
of the previous slide you had up --
can you explain what a potential test site means and what all
the elements of that would look like so we can understand what
that exercise is?
>> The exercise is a design exercise.
We have architects and urban designers
and when we come around to the alternative phase,
we'll have another public meeting.
Some of our designs can either be
located geographically or not.
They can just be ideas that are focused on activation
and thinking through how to really transform and make
the downtown be what you all want it to be.
I like to use real life sites because you
get better information.
But we're not trying to design any of these sites
and none of these sites are a master plan.
It's a test and exploration that we
do as architects and designers and also, we
have the opportunity to work with an economist
to get a better sense of the fundamentals
of the type of product you might want to see.
And when I say product, I mean a market, a hotel, or a daycare.
An amphitheater.
Things like that.
Where if you want to see some of these types of programs
in your downtown, you need to understand the market
fundamentals to achieve it.
It's not intended necessarily to be designed
for any one of these sites.
I think we may not show it as such
but we will use the sites as essentially test cases
in order to test out design ideas.
You can think about another example
of that might be there's an interest in achieving
infrastructure improvements that's paid
for by private development.
You want to know what your threshold is
so you can access money to improve infrastructure.
You want to know whether it's changing the fundamentals
of that program or products.
Does that make sense?
>> If I could chime in, it's also a big question that comes
up when we talk about different types of land uses or programing
is the feasibility.
This gives it opportunity to take
actual underdeveloped properties of the downtown
or developed in a way that still has potential and look
at feasibility for these programs.
As K was saying, not necessarily a specific site
plan or design for anything.
It's using the actual real world examples of the space
so that we can see the feasibility of the plan.
>> Okay.
>> Yes please.
>> Maybe you've just answered my question but I feel I'm still
missing something.
Why would we as a town be doing this as opposed to --
we are not going to be building a market or building those
projects you just showed as examples.
So would not the developers or the investors be the ones
that should be doing this feasibility planning?
I'm not sure I'm tracking what we're even doing here come
on talking about these -- >> One of the ways I think about it is
it is de-risking programs you want to see.
If you want to see activation or a hotel or new forms of housing,
let's say, housing --
I don't know -- you want to understand how best to achieve
that.
You're essentially telling the market
through your regulatory and process requirements
that you are ready.
This provides you all with information
and a better plan that helps you achieve your goals.
Does that make sense?
>> Sure.
Thank you.
>> And any other questions from planning?
Go ahead.
>> If I could, on the prior slide, the yellow --
those are parcels that have applications.
They're on this map.
How information gathering and circulation --
what does that mean?
What does this plan intend to do with the ones in yellow?
That would be the Millsite, the Windsor Creek site
and the all of our site north of the Oliver Shopping Center.
>> I think one of the things I would like to think that the SAP
can do is provide better notion of circulation for those sites
in yellow.
We wouldn't be rezoning them and certainly there's
an active application as you know on two of them
and interest in a school site.
This is a way to fill gaps in your existing stationary plan
and so I have also information gathering because we are already
collecting a lot of information from folks about that,
and with the Active Creek, we want
to understand how do we implement
the additional circulation.
One of the things that Windsor struggles with
is that you have an incomplete street network.
When the town was incorporated, a lot
of the places that had been built by the county
don't include sidewalks, they don't necessarily go through.
One of the things we want to do is
be more effective in helping build out your street network
so you have the grid you've been looking for.
I think in Belle Village, the old SAP has additional streets
but it's not currently enforceable.
>> And speaking to that, will the stationary plan deal with
design and specifically when you look at the property north of --
sorry, I'm not using the right term --
there is a plan for a single family housing there.
How would the stationary plan deal with that?
>> We cannot affect it I don't think if it's already entitled.
Not entitled.
We would be able to defer to Kim.
We will have to see, she said.
They are on separate tracks.
>> It's just an application at this point.
>> It's an incomplete application.
>> It's one of the reasons -- >> I can barely hear you.
>> The mics are not very effective.
So I guess -- the stationary plan --
it's not going to deal with the zoning of that property?
>> We'll deal with the zoning and that we do need to update
the design standards, design and development standards.
>> You mean make those as objective as opposed to --
as possible?
>> It's possible.
This application is already in process.
Depending on its timing, we will see what happens.
The plan -- I was going to show you really quickly because I
think this might answer some questions about the timing --
is here.
Just so you can see it.
It's actually -- one of the reasons why it's not going to be
a big overhaul is it is a short time period between 12 and 14
months which is very fast.
It's super fast for a planning project.
We are here in the blue in the information gathering.
Will have a period of this option hearing
we were talking about with the alternatives and some findings
and proposals and recommendations
for your objective design standards and for programs.
We'll come forward with some recommendations about mobility
and mobility hub, how to achieve consistency for example.
That will come forward at the end of the green here
and then we are moving towards documentation
and the final plan needs to be issued next summer quite early.
It's really coming back to you all in May of 2027.
>> Will you be prioritizing -- the Creek system for example,
through the mill and the Windsor Creek School,
in terms of pedestrian and bicycle mobility?
>> I saw that comment and I think it's a good one.
It's also a good example of this kind of feasibility work
we could do is really understand what it would take, for example,
your civic Center plan has a daylighting of the creek
and a host of new streets.
We might want to think through how do we better implement
on that desired outcome.
What can we put forward in the plan from programs
to priorities?
This is a way to put your priorities out there
and the implementation happens through a sequence
of other projects that are happening after the plan.
>> Great, and so those comments will be part of our discussion
after we hear public comment on things that are priorities
for this council and Planning Commission and what you want
to see in the station area plan so we can get that information
out and part of the record and it will help the team go forward
and put together a plan with all of our information, included,
and we'll come back and visit again in the future.
At this time what I want to do is open up public comment.
Again comment this is a special meeting
and only comments or statements concerning
the agenda items listed today are going to be allowed.
Each public comment is normally restricted to three minutes
and we do have our clocks up.
Hopefully they will be working.
Anyone who wants to give public comments, please
line up at the podium and we will have them
all from here at the microphone.
Anybody who wants to give public comment?
Come on up.
It's your time.
Hello.
Good evening Council and planning Commission. name
is Melanie.
I'm here because of Windsor Creek Elementary School site is
part of the area plan and I believe it's future use needs
to be carefully considered as U --
Opportunity to serve the broader community
rather than being a plan for high density
residential development.
This isn't simply about whether Windsor needs more housing.
We need to plan responsibly for housing and growth
and Windsor has already done a great deal in this area.
The town has already met its requirements for low income
housing and there's -- already underway.
At this point I believe we need to slow down and take
a A thoughtful look -- we need to find opportunities to make
meaningful public spaces and destinations that benefit
everyone in Windsor, not for residential development.
The question is whether this particular park or type
of development -- believe it is not.
The station area and vibrant area is Windsor.
It's a place residents can walk, communities
who choose to spend their time and money in Windsor.
High density resident development
would miss an important opportunity.
It would use one of Windsor's most valuable pieces of land
to, primarily for housing, when we
could be creating something that benefits the entire community.
Be considered for a park, public open space, development
and supports the goals of the station area plan.
Any of those we thought would be a great fit
for the Windsor Creek site.
I'm asking the council to preserve this public use
designation and protect this opportunity
for the future of Windsor.
Please do not change the general plan
to development in this site.
Thank you.
>> Neighbors with Melanie there.
I second everything she said and when
looking at the examples, which I love,
and I get why we are not looking at the Barlow or Hillsborough,
because a lot of those are people traveling
in wine tours and stuff.
And what might be really really good,
what I've been envisioning from the workshop that we had,
was more family opportunity.
Like Melanie said, it is a nice piece of land right
in the middle and from all the transit, it is walking --
and we talked about putting up signs like here or here,
here's how you get there --
there's a good opportunity for people to go oh,
I'll get off the train and hang out --
but just across the way here's this other, in my mind,
multicultural center which has theater, things for kids to do.
Maybe there's a thing at the green that adult bands and stuff
but maybe there's something really fun for the teens
to do but they're close by.
They can meet up.
I agree 100%.
If we were to take an aerial view and look at the paths
around the creek and all the places we could walk,
any of those open land spaces around
are just opportunities for us to grow community activity.
So I agree with that.
One of the examples that was here for the bar in Sacramento
--
I think what I saw was it's a cool structure and the parking
-- it had gone up and I saw some cars up high which I
hadn't really considered before.
That leaves the structure underneath for people
to do stuff inside with the cars being up top.
Neat idea.
Also something we've never done in Windsor
is underground parking.
I don't know what the rules are but being able to create parking
underground so that we can utilize the space up top for us
--
to play and have fun -- that kind of thing --
so off the cuff comments.
Hope you'll take it into consideration.
Thanks.
>> Thank you.
>> I'm Kevin, resident of Windsor.
One of the takeaways I'm getting from participating in the group
project we had in July and tonight
is we've got to develop a spine of our community
and what is going to come off of that spine
so we have a future vision.
What's problematic in my experience of Windsor
is patches of developers going forward.
And it's like a puzzle.
Streets are weird.
Sections of the community are chopped up, a lot chopped up.
If we could focus on like when Sam is talking about Mill Creek
-- what is our theme of the creek coming through,
maybe reaching towards the other side of town?
Is there a foot or bike path?
What if we complement that with a conceptual planning
we've been talking about tonight of specialized stores?
We have some stores that have struggled.
How do we get them to support days activities,
out the Riverside Park -- and local things so it is
Windsor's identity maybe outdoor recreation --
and then things that start coming out of that around
the town green?
And in the evening the rooftop restaurants
that if you get some height in a restaurant,
you can go down the one on one, they'll
want to stop and say hey, I want to check that out.
So we have a visual identity.
That's what I think this whole conceptualization is
really helpful for.
It's hard to get a group of town people who have lived here
to say oh, what should it be.
You see it as today -- we can improve it a lot.
When I went under that --
I forget what it's called, the passage
under the train from the high school to the Mill Creek,
I didn't know it was there.
I was frustrated because I couldn't get over from where
this middle school is.
And I'm like that should be joined because I would be hiking
back and up with my dog --
we need a theme going on so it doesn't keep getting chopped up
and so we have bits and pieces.
If we have that theme, then we can build out the concept.
That's just my generalized comment.
>> Thank you.
>> We appreciate that.
Anyone else?
>> Lois Fisher.
I guess my comments --
I'm trying to talk about --
I've given lots of information.
One thing I can bring forward --
I was part of the group that said let's do a town green.
I watched the whole thing and the biggest concern
I've had since day one is we buried our town green.
You need a GPS to find it and no wonder
we have problems getting people to come there.
One of the things we did with the Civic Center visioning is we
actually moved the library off to the side so that we could get
views on one side --
so I was just really hoping that would be included.
The other thing --
I don't have a better plan but this was the original town
plan for Windsor.
This is the one we actually built the town off of.
One thing included in here comment much as you can see,
they were the proposed roads.
They were proposed roads for the Windsor site.
The Windsor Creek site.
And without these roads come the second people came in and took
out the roads, all of a sudden our plan has showed a road along
the creek -- it's shown the road wasn't there.
It was just blank.
Ever since then we have had a heck of a time trying to get
those things -- so I would like to recommend that you look
at this plan and see the good things.
This is the one that built the town and the other
came afterwards.
Also, if we can get eyes of the town green so it connects up
to a major street -- when you move to the library --
are you incorporating the Civic Center visioning plan come with
that material into your work?
All right.
There's more but that's it.
>> Thank you.
Anyone else?
>> Okay.
Seeing no one else wanting to get public comment comment
I will close public comment and bring the discussion back
to this body.
I'd like to have a really robust conversation.
This is something for the future come to downtown for Windsor
and I want to hear everyone's ideas
and see also some specific things that might be interesting
so that we can get those ideas out
and collected so we can go forward with this.
Is there anyone who would like to start?
Commissioner, I cut you off earlier and so
if you wanted to give your comment now about parking,
please do so.
>> I can give comments about that.
I went back and read the existing stationary plan
to highlight some of the things that I liked or took notes
on things that we needed to work on.
One of the things I felt held true
was the first chapter, the guiding principles.
I think that's where this group can focus our efforts
and make sure that the guiding principles still fit for what
we are trying to do today.
And I think I found 1 or 2 things I thought maybe
I would cross off.
What felt like the core in the vision for the town
is still there.
I appreciated that, that over these many years --
that we are really holding true to these guiding principles
of what we want.
I didn't call it the spine -- in my notes I called it the Heart
of Windsor because that's what I believe it truly is.
I'm hoping we refer back to some of those guiding principles
and maybe refine and start there.
That's kind of where I thought we should go here.
The reading example --
I had been there and I took a ton of pictures
because I said wow, I would love this in Windsor.
Some of the things you couldn't see on the particular site that
was in the box across the street was a park
and that particular day they were just rotating bands
every hour and a half.
They would pop on with their own equipment and start playing
and then there was a lawn and people were listening.
Next door was the Health and Human Services Department
so there was a mix of public services on the same street.
They all had really wide sidewalks, wide enough
that people can walk.
There was a game of cornhole going
on in the middle of the sidewalk.
It was just so active and engaged,
with different things going on in the same space.
It had both on street parking through a corridor in the back,
was a little parking lot.
I had done a walk around the block and there was an alleyway
with parking and across the street --
there were more little parking pockets based around what used
to be there but it was pretty creative mix of street parking
and lots here and there.
But the way that the space was engaged for different activities
all along the whole street I thought was impressive.
And I did like that they had a very large,
about the size of this room, covered dining room
that serviced 4 or 5 different businesses that
had misters and fire pits depending on your season
with roll up doors.
It was like the people I knew lived there, golfing buddies,
sports moms -- everybody was -- it was such a community
gathering space and really cool.
>> Thank you for that and who would like to go next?
Okay.
Your ideas?
Thank you.
>> So I do want to bring it back a little bit but I mentioned
earlier, we've seen really great projects come forward
and we've approved them and tried to push them through.
We had a hotel come the flat iron
building, the airspace condominiums,
all those projects were well designed and thought out.
I think we would have been happy and proud to have those built.
It wasn't the town that stopped those processes.
There were construction costs and COVID and a lot of financing
stuff that comes into play where well we can change our plans
and regulations, at the end of the day
it costs what it costs and we've had some great interest
and we've pushed some great projects
through that just didn't make it across the finish line
and I don't think changing the plan maybe addresses that.
But when we look at what is being built,
that's where I'm concerned.
We see a ton of housing being built
where we lost local control over those projects
and when we look at the few spaces left, the lot
north of Oliver, we haven't seen a great project there ever.
The projects that were built or that were planned
were decent but were they anything
like what we saw up here?
No.
They were specific to the land use that we designated and so I
don't know how we attract a totally different kind
of project than anything that's ever been proposed to those
areas but I do have a concern about what may go into those
spots if we don't have any control over it
and that's whether it's the Windsor Creek lot or --
and that's why I brought up -- and I think you called it down
zoning as -- we may need to do because a developer can come
in and ask us to rezone to give more density and we can make
that choice.
But if we don't have that choice in place, we lose that control.
That's my biggest concern is that loss of local control
in any of these projects that come forward because we're not
seeing the ones we want necessarily
being able to be funded and built.
We're seeing stuff that we don't have any say in going forward.
I would focus on that.
Street connectivity and sidewalks are very important.
I live close enough to walk here but I
don't let my kids walk here because there's
no sidewalk, simple stuff that we should look at down the road.
Sorry.
>> Thank you so much.
>> Mam?
>> I wanted to give other people -- thank you.
Thank you for pointing out the smart underpass.
I think a lot of us -- it's in an area that's kind of remote.
You could provide a connection from the Windsor High School --
and the park -- to the shell station at downtown.
(inaudible) deal in the downtown is giving people feeling
comfortable riding and walking.
I feel comfortable enough.
I do the underpass riding.
And you get used to it.
But people who are not used to it don't.
So there's also this possibility to look at --
we overbuilt the central.
Santa Rosa's overpass come up from the junior college
to the -- to the other side of the town --
it's a really important overpass but I think it might be like $38
million and this is the 18th year to provide that.
We might want to really consider if that's really feasible.
And if it's not, let's stop talking about it because --
and for us that are somewhat making the rules,
we have to say well, that's in the future.
But -- anyway, I think that's really important and I also
would like the MTC --
I don't know who was on the slide.
You said they would like in these zones that 25 units per
acre --
I don't know if that was on a slide
but I think you mentioned it, so when
they say they would recommend that, how do we deal with that?
That's a question that needs to be asked because we talk
about loss of local control and then
we have MTC saying we recommend 25 units per acre.
That is quite a bit more than our general plan and zoning
really looks at.
>> You're actually not that far away from that.
Your town center zone and your compact residential.
One of the ways MTC calculates it
is you actually are looking at future development
and not existing.
So they've got a calculation where you're also
pulling out certain sites.
So you're very close.
It doesn't require actually a lot of changes to your existing
zoning.
And there's a maximum of 35 -- >> I won't be able to tell that
to the person on the street that we are really close to that.
>> Can I interrupt and ask what are those little changes?
You say we are close.
What does we're close mean?
What would that -- how significant is that in this?
That's where you said like 1 to $2 million.
So each of those different categories have 25 points.
We're assuming you get 19 points under land use and density
so we're not consistent 100% with the requirements.
Then under parking you are 25 of 25 and under circulation access
you are 25 of 25 or something like that.
I'm not remembering off the top of my head but that's what I
mean, where you have different ways you can be consistent
depending on what's happening within your particular
jurisdiction your town center zoning and compact residential
and medium density residential, you can see compact is 24 per
acre right there and town center has --
I have it in my notes -- but slightly more than that in terms
of per acre.
>> (inaudible)
>> Please don't ask me about the math.
>> Are you including properties already built?
You are including properties already built in the density
calculations or just vacant -- >> You exclude them.
>> Town center -- >> You have a lot of single family zoning.
And it's only -- it's only sites that are residential by right.
>> But we're only talking about like town center,
everything is built there except the --
>> That's not entirely true.
You have Mill Creek, Belle village,
the area around the town center, various sites
and opportunity sites that have been located
throughout this area plan.
You do already have relatively desirable compact residential
already in your stationary plan through your compact residential
and town center zoning.
>> Okay.
>> One of the things we can do is --
one of the things that most of Northern California cities are
addressing is that it is cost infeasible to build multifamily.
One of the things the market is looking at
is townhouses and that's why you are seeing
so many projects come back switching
from multifamily to townhouses.
This is one of the reasons we like
to play around with feasibility with our economist.
We start to test out different housing types.
One of the things we heard for example,
and some of our workshops, in Windsor as being sort
of a creative city, thinking about different specialized
types of residential --
I know there's challenges with Belle Village
but there's ways to be thinking about lived work for example
which is included in this.
You've never seen that kind of project come through
and you've never seen other kinds of shared housing
or cottage housing or different types that are grant oriented
that are desirable, slightly lower cost.
So I think you do have some opportunities to explore
different types of compact housing
that makes sense in this type of environment.
It could get you more types of diversity of product
that you are seeing now.
Go ahead.
I would add anecdotally that in our downtown area,
the projects that we have seen have all
been towards the bottom of the density range or even below.
So for that downtown environment,
the super high density product type
hasn't been proposed by developers so far.
As we are looking at -- it's definitely a valid concern.
We are losing local control.
Density is one piece of the puzzle
we need to be looking at but also design and circulation
and connectivity and the visioning for the downtown
are also big parts of this moving forward.
So staff definitely hears those concerns
and that's going to be worked into the analysis
that we're preparing.
>> Have we had any development in the core downtown?
You've indicated that the development is lower density.
How long ago was the last development in downtown?
The orange design -- that Oren couldn't build because he went
bankrupt and -- because of the 2008 catastrophe?
I'm trying to --
I'm trying to vision has there been any development
in the core downtown?
I don't think so.
>> You haven't had any multifamily development
in the past decade.
Certainly.
We haven't had any single family either.
>> That's an issue I think -- one of the issues that needs
to be unpacked.
I think this is an opportunity to do that.
That's where we are entering into the phase
where we are identifying these challenges
and we've looked at your pipeline
and seeing what's happened to the various projects that
have gotten almost there but then haven't made it.
So we're questioning exploring what that means and how we could
help solve for that challenge..
Core Creek -- I'm sorry.
That is one development that is in the downtown and currently --
that's the only one I can think of.
>> Mike do you want to give comment before you leave?
Thank you.
>> I also wanted to echo one of Sam's sentiments with
the Undercrossing and I don't know if we've been coordinating,
but something that struck me is the opportunity with the Star
Creek development, the Star Creek Trail on the northern end.
Where the smart trail is going.
And connecting some of the other neighborhoods
through the community.
I think we have some opportunities there
in this plan to really build out some of those bike
and pedestrian opportunities for connectivity.
Where is that located?
Being taught by the green picnic table, that blue squiggle line.
>> It from where we're sitting diagonal.
>> What you call the smart trail.
It goes and comes out at Oak Park.
>> Yes.
Let me block that trail.
>> There is an area in the downtown that --
how many of you have experienced the parcel of land behind
the shell station?
Does it look like a park now that it's
been mowed and taken care of?
And it has nice trees and is green?
But who would want to recreate in something like that next
to the freeway and the shell station?
Well, if you walk down into the creek,
you can walk under old highway and come up on the other side
and we looked at the undercrossing
of 101 years ago going through the culvert.
That culvert was much too small.
But the bridge is not.
And it is an opportunity to connect downtown
with actually connected to the east side.
Because -- old highway going underneath is really difficult
for pedestrians and bicyclists and cars.
It's most difficult for cars.
It's difficult for -- but -- yeah,
and it is something to think about.
We can think about well, that's where the homeless all live
and on and on.
But there is the ability because the creek there --
it has a pretty good slope to get down to it to.
So I did want to bring that up because that is this Paseo
design.
That little park behind the shell station
is actually really nice and it's got a creek.
>> An actual park?
>> Luckily it got cleaned up.
It's pretty nice.
>> Vice Chair?
Thank you.
>> Is this microphone on?
No?
It's green..
Can you hear me now?
Okay.
So thank you everybody.
It's been good and I enjoyed the presentation
and enjoyed being here.
I'm going to call it my junior year report card because it
involves three D's.
I think what I like that we're doing
is we're looking at building three things.
We're looking at building something diverse.
We want to build a stationary that's diverse.
You still can't hear me?
It wasn't a good joke.
>> It's on now.
>> Better now?
>> So the vice mayor gets a better microphone?
Well done.
So again, the three D's of the thoughts of the stationary plan.
The first one is diverse.
We should allow a place where we can have entrepreneurs coming in
to try new things and they can fail and they can be risk takers
and they can try stuff.
Part of having a downtown engineer train station
is popping off and going what's here?
What is different than Rohnert Park?
What is different than Healdsburg
and what is different than Petaluma?
We've got to be diverse.
The next one is dynamic.
Cities cannot sit still and be there.
They have to change and be interesting.
Give people a reason to come back.
We've got to make it simple for things to be dynamic
and the third D is dense.
I know this is kind of like what are you talking about for dense?
It has to be walkable.
We know it has to be financially sustainable for our town.
If we don't have the density if we're taxable land comment
we will not be able to afford it.
We have to think about that in the station area plan.
I love the idea of hearing about some travel
stuff for market halls and underground pathways and stuff.
I think it gets us thinking about what could be.
Oftentimes I think Windsor gets trapped in what was
and we might be shorting ourselves the future
that people came before us come on some of our who in this room
come that created the actual downtown.
So now's our chance to think about
what will the next Windsor be when God help us
2075 and the next group of people
are sitting on this table?
In the same town hall?
Those are my comments and I'm looking forward
to hearing from other people.
Thank you.
>> Uno Mas?
>> Also these guys from
>> Can you get closer to the microphone?
We're having a microphone issue tonight.
>> These principles are from 2013 and it's time
for an upgrade and these are the documents used to communicate
also with the developers and the business people in the world
to say here's what we want.
Some of the issues after talking with developers
and fabulous projects that we have gone
through the process of vetting and approving
and we're jumping at the bit to get them
built and they don't, some of that is attributed to the delays
in getting it through the permitting process,
the entitlement process.
So anything we can do on this end
to streamline and to be very clear about what Windsor wants
built here will benefit those projects at the other end
and actually having them come to fruition.
>> All right.
Sam quickly?
Please?
>> There is a problem with access from the smart station
to the downtown.
The people get off and there's a parking lot.
And thinking about the solution, there may not be one.
But it might be that that vehicle access through the arch
-- that may have to be closed to vehicles.
I don't know what that means but that might be
something we need to look at.
Because to try to use the arch -- it doesn't work.
I think a lot of people spend some time trying to figure out
-- in the village for example, from the streets --
there is kind of a pathway through the parking lot
and it is so people and cars kind of know it.
It seems like we may want to look at that because it is not
real welcoming.
And just wanted to raise that as an issue for the stationary >>
Council member?
>> I wanted to explain what I'm seeing tonight.
I am seeing a lot.
But in the beginning, the nice pictures and the descriptions
of the areas that could be used were very intriguing to me.
What I find interesting about being
on town council is that the commissions, commissioners
and staff do a lot of work and essentially come down and give
us three choices and we check a, B or C and the decisions made,
we take a vote and move forward.
And I would love to see a book --
and I'm talking only about those slides which were examples from
other cities, and I would like to see a book that tells me
which properties are available for doing interesting things.
What are the planning and zoning problems or opportunities
in those?
And that's chapter one.
And chapter two is a spectrum of ideas
that apply to that that are like the ones we saw here.
And then a page full of boxes that I can rate one through five
or something like that.
And then we can stand back and not
talk about all the other stuff and go forward in that category.
That's my dream for these things.
Thank you..
Commissioner Richards?
>> My comments are more about things that I have read,
heard tonight's and connecting some dots.
Looking at 2097, one thing that stands out
is improving bike parking facilities.
Looking at our guiding principles,
continuing to promote green leadership,
encourage outdoor activity living.
While doing that we can build that connectivity and community
gathering space and the mobility space.
(inaudible) helps with the diversity and --
that Commissioner said, talks a bit with what Council member
stamen said.
I think for me those are those aspects that I look at and want
to see us build on.
>> Excellent.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate all the comments from everyone
and I want to go through a few I have real quick.
What I would like to see is again,
what are these exact changes that need to be done?
Excuse me -- to make us eligible for the 1 to $2 million
for the downtown area?
What does that mean?
I think you talked that there's a preference now for townhouses
and I'd like to see ways that we can have purchasable residences
for people to build equity and wealth
and be able to move on potentially later if they want.
Maybe they stay.
Whenever we see apartments that doesn't necessarily
give people any ability to build wealth
and I see that in our downtown area.
I would like to see --
I really want to see this connectivity with the mill
project through the Windsor Creek site and if we can get
that put into this plan I would like to discuss that so that
plan ahead of time -- is something we talked about with
Council member Sam quite a bit is to make sure we don't lose
the opportunity.
I would like to see a Northern Gateway as part of our plan.
There's nothing that signals the town coming from Arada so anyone
coming off the freeway and out -- nothing tells you hey,
you have come to the downtown of Windsor and I'd love to see that
-- kind of like the Gaslamp District in San Diego,
how you just see that beautiful archway and it signals you that
you're coming into an area that's just vibrant
and wonderful.
It doesn't have to be just like that, just something
similar that would make it just for Windsor.
We've talked about there's a little mention of entertainment
districts are really important so it gives us the opportunity
to have our businesses spread out into the town green area
so you can possibly take drinks and walk around the town
and have the music playing and people feel it's vibrant
and there's an evening nightlife that we see when we have
our Tuesday nights and when we have our Thursday concerts
but I would love to see it every night
and I would love to see people walking
down there so you experience the nightlife in downtown Windsor.
I think part of our objective design standards
if we can get it in there is to have bike parking
for every new development.
I find it bothersome to ride my bike to Oliver's and not
have a place to park it.
I'd like to make sure that is built in as an infrastructure
to each new development and I would love to see bike parking
all around so people can ride their bikes and park and walk
around come and get your bike comment to another spot --
and again, the 1 to 2 million --
I want to figure out how we get more money
to help with our downtown area.
And see if that's reasonable for us.
I really want to work with our transit agency to develop our --
our last mile around Windsor.
I know the transit agency is working on their plan
also right now to revamp some of their routes
and I want to work together with them
to have a last mile where people can ride the smart train here
and easily get onto a bus and ride to their house
so that they are more likely to do that.
I agree with everyone's comments on the smart trail.
It goes down and underneath and over by the high school.
So that walkway, when you come out
underneath towards the high school
there's not really anything that guides you.
There's not even a pathway that takes you out
from the Undercrossing.
This drops you into a flower bed and I'm like, well, that was --
so I would love to see some wayfinding signs and finish
that.
I don't think it would take much to finish that and make
it an easy area that guides people back to where
they can walk on the sidewalks.
I want to see what it means.
I know former Planning Commissioner
Lois talked about the proposed roads and what that looks like.
And if those proposed roads in there
would help us to really have more control
over that area in Mill Creek and the area down in that area.
And I do think there is room in the future for an Overcrossing
101.
It certainly doesn't have to cost what Santa Rosa's did.
They went super fancy and we don't have to go super fancy.
It also doesn't have to take that long.
But that's something that if you were to --
we look at our downtown but if you took a higher look from it,
if there was connectivity between Raley's and Safeway
and the downtown area, if we had significant connectivity there
it would really allow people to go back and forth and walk
and ride their bikes and have a more vibrant downtown area
and not just a stationary.
So I tucked that in the back for the future
for an Overcrossing for 101.
I want to say is Jody's still here?
Jody?
What he tried to have underground parking downtown.
That was the underground for the hotel and it didn't work.
That's why that big hole was there.
That was supposed to be underground parking
and unfortunately that project didn't go through
and we know interest rates are still high
and the cost of building is really high.
I believe in the future we'll get something wonderful.
So I just want to finish up with that.
We are open to different ideas and this plan
is the way that we're going to do it so thank you
all for your comments and your ideas in the public
for your comments and ideas and I
hope they were captured so we can
keep working towards this plan.
It's by no means done and I think December --
is that correct when the next -- when we're shooting for the next
visit to this?
With a lot of the inputs?
And a lot of the next steps.
Lastly, I wanted to say on some of those sites that talked about
--
I would like to see what the feasibility is because it's kind
of like if you were to do -- if a company were to do a sequa
and drill a well or something and then share that information
to everybody, then would a developer come in and go oh,
I can see that maybe my project works there?
It would be similar to.
If you had feasibility on all these different sites and you
could see as a developer like oh maybe there is feasibility
for me to bring my project and tweak it a little bit and see
if it works -- that might open the door for developers to come
in and do some things and they don't have to be huge projects
but if there's something a little on a site in the town
that might be creative, I'd like to have those and I think those
are all included in this grant.
This isn't money we are spending.
It's all grant funded.
Since it's grant funded I would like to take the full advantage
and see what they want to show us.
>> Okay, for that I would like to move to item number eight
which is closing comments by council members.
If there's anyone who has closing comments
come I will go straight down the line.
Commissioner Richards?
>> Just dovetailing off of one of the comments you made,
we would love to see a diverse group of housing.
Townhomes, cottage homes, something to mix it up.
Would love for that to come forward.
>> I would also like to revisit the implementation plan
at the end of our current area plan and it looks like we could
cross a lot of successes off the list and grow some vision
and timelines for action going forward.
>> Also focusing on real visual interest,
not just buildings for the sake of buildings or centers but can
they really provide a visually interesting experience
for people coming here?
>> I like that.
I want to say thank you for everyone who showed up.
These meetings aren't super action
packed but thank you and stay involved
because that's important.
Did you try that microphone?
Okay.
Real quick comment you mentioned what
makes us different than Petaluma and all those things.
When it comes to the train.
For me is that the train lets off right downtown
and you go to Petaluma and you're at five blocks away
or you go to Brunner Park and you're in G section.
We have an advantage that we're delivering people
to our community and the idea of making that walkway
inviting and bringing people to downtown makes sense.
We have a better start because we don't
have to reroute train tracks.
Even at Santa Rosa, downtown if you want to walk under third
Street -- that's up to you.
That's all I've got.
>> Great.
So a couple of things that I left out
is I really do want to focus on the zoning policy that makes it
so we are reducing blight and that means making sure
that our parking is in front of buildings
and that we do have on street parking where it's
appropriate and walkable areas.
We can put on street parking and that helps our businesses.
And was there something else?
I think this is an opportune time,
as we see what's going to happen with this Emily Rose parking,
that we do look at it and try to see what
will be the best for that open gateway from the smart train
into the downtown.
We might just have to have a study session specifically
on that.
Okay?
>> I like to say thank you to all of you who are here.
Ask your friends to come next time.
It's a great party and --
I've said all I want to say with respect to my dreams.
Thank you so much.
>> Sam?
>> I think the time is now.
I'm struggling with this updated plan because we have development
applications in that are going to affect --
more in my opinion than this plan.
And I think what we need to do is look at the current plan
and look at what we are planning and put those in motion
in the current applications.
The mill, the Windsor Creek site,
whatever that's going to be -- and the trail in core creek --
those are my comments.
It needs to happen now.
And in those principles that we are >> Great and thank you,
I agree.
I think that's probably heard by our planning commissioners who
are actively looking at these projects coming in
and can hear that we like to be thoughtful about the projects
that are in application process now
and then looking forward to the future
with the rest of the plan.
I'm going to move on to item number
nine which is adjournment.
Our next regular council meeting is scheduled for August 19th,
2026 at 6 p.m.
Right here in the Civic Center Council Chambers.
And that is 9391 old River Highway Building 400.
And the next Planning Commission meeting is now scheduled
for August 25th at 6 p.m..
Thanks everybody.