Palo Alto’s downtown plan would focus on housing | News

Fueled by federal resources, Palo Alto is planning to undertake a three-yr planning system aimed at answering a critical question: What would it consider to establish more housing in the downtown location?

The town has been given a grant of $800,000 from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for the organizing system, which is envisioned to choose about 3 many years and culminate in a new Downtown Housing Approach. The Metropolis Council will look at accepting the grant on Monday night time as well as focus on committing extra city cash for the scheduling work.

If adopted, the downtown plan would engage in a central part in the council’s efforts to improve housing in the city’s most transit-served area. It might also support the metropolis program for transportation improvements, together with a reconfiguration of the city’s northernmost rail crossing at Palo Alto Avenue so that the street and the tracks no for a longer period intersect.

That reported, the boundaries of the proposed scheduling location cease just limited of the downtown Transit Middle, which involves a Caltrain station and many bus stations. The plan would cover the space just east of the tracks, between Alma and Cowper streets and bounded by Lytton Avenue in the north and Hamilton Avenue in the south.

When transportation improvements would be regarded as as portion of the setting up, the key focus of the exertion would be housing. The funds that the MTC is distributing comes from the Federal Highway Administration and is dedicated to arranging in “priority advancement spots” — locations that towns designate as ripe for expansion and modify and that are commonly located subsequent to transit hubs. The council designated a 206-acre part of downtown as a priority advancement place in January 2020, generating it qualified for setting up grants. The 76-acre space that team has proposed for the Downtown Housing System is included in the precedence improvement spot.

Arranging Director Jonathan Lait said that town workers experienced at first deemed a broader downtown setting up energy, a single that considered the transit center and improving connections concerning downtown, Stanford College and Stanford Searching Heart. The decision to aim on the segment just east of the transit hub was based mostly on the staff’s estimate of what can truly be achieved with the grant pounds.

Lait observed, even so, that staff members has been in conversations with Stanford College about possibly growing the place to involve the transit region if the council opts to do so.

The city’s Thorough System, which is commonly observed as its land use bible, contains a policy that encourages an area system for downtown. A broad evaluation, on the other hand, would require far more than double the grant dollars that the metropolis has acquired from the MTC, Lait stated.

“We are genuinely conversing about a extra extensive setting up energy,” Lait claimed, referring to the Extensive Prepare policy. “The notion in this article is to capitalize on the prospect that we have now.”

If the council approves the MTC grant, the housing system would be a single of a number of concurring efforts to make a new vision for downtown. The council has by now directed personnel to examine streetscape advancements along College Avenue to make it extra compatible with the parklets that popped up alongside the thoroughfare throughout the pandemic and that are now set to grow to be lasting fixtures.

Then you can find grade separation, the city’s substantial-scale exertion to redesign all of its grade crossings so that streets no for a longer time intersect with rail tracks. The redesign effort originally provided the city’s northernmost rail crossing at Palo Alto Avenue, though the council in the end voted to defer its layout get the job done on this crossing right up until it sorts a broader program for the downtown space.

Provided its constrained scope, the MTC grant is not likely to even further the discussion of the Palo Alto Avenue crossing. But Mayor Pat Burt famous that other funding sources may possibly come to be accessible for grade separations in the downtown spot. One particular prospective supply is the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which incorporated $700 million for grade separation as portion of its Measure B, the 2016 sales-tax measure. The cash is earmarked for Palo Alto, Mountain Watch and Sunnyvale.

Burt said in an job interview that a person vital variable that the council will take into consideration in its dialogue of the MTC grant is the degree to which the town must be hanging its setting up endeavours on the regional agency’s stipulations. He also mentioned it is important for the housing approach to be reliable with the city’s vision for transportation advancements.

“I might want to see a prepare that would enhance housing in our downtown place significantly above time and do so in a way that is integrated in not only more transit use but required modifications that fit grade separations and infrastructure that is approaching 100 yrs outdated in the multimodal center,” Burt mentioned.

The MTC grant calls for the metropolis to total its arranging work inside 3 decades, by April 30, 2025. The funding arrangement for the grant involves Palo Alto to total a sequence of studies as aspect of the organizing course of action, together with an analysis of the associations involving jobs and housing affordability, an assessment of present inequities amongst people of various racial or ethnic backgrounds, and thought of improvements to improvement benchmarks that would make housing construction more possible.

The plan’s aim to raise household design in downtown Palo Alto has taken on a larger perception of urgency over the previous yr as the metropolis is transferring toward adopting a new housing aspect, a document that identifies housing web-sites and procedures that will enable it to meet up with its regional mandate of incorporating 6,086 new dwellings by 2031. The spot quickly about the downtown Caltrain station could play a pivotal role. Stanford College, which owns the land, experienced proposed a strategy for accommodating up to 530 flats in close proximity to the transit station. That, having said that, would entail a 137-foot-tall making.

In March, the council backed a extra modest choice when it voted to involve 270 residences at the centre web-site in the future housing component.

Even with a limited scope that excludes the transit middle, the MTC grant is not likely to be sufficient to entire the program for the 76 acres. Metropolis employees think that it would choose at least an extra $150,000 every year to retain the services of consultants who would guidance the job, in accordance to the report from the setting up office. A vital conclusion that the council will have to make on April 18 is no matter whether to dedicate these funds.

The report also notes that downtown faces numerous issues that limit housing creation. These include things like superior land charges, the inclination of office environment progress to be considerably a lot more worthwhile for builders than residential structures, and the point that general public parking usually takes up a substantial volume of land in the space.

“As a result of a targeted and considerate housing plan, the town can establ
ish strategies to assist defeat these worries and uncover opportunities to market bigger housing production,” the report states.