Two projects planned for downtown Palo Alto are in limbo following the city council’s passage of an urgency ordinance this week that removes a parking exemption provision from the municipal code.
On Monday, council members voted 8-0 to place a 45-day moratorium on the provision’s use while the city researches solutions to parking problems in and around its economic nerve centers. The ordinance applies to both the downtown and California Avenue parking assessment districts.
“I think parking is a serious issue and I think we do owe Professorville, Downtown North and other areas a commitment … to do our best to start resolving these issues,” said Vice Mayor Greg Scharff.
Developers in the assessment districts aren’t required to build as much parking as they typically would under the municipal code. The provision is a relic of the 1980s, when the city was seeking to encourage downtown development in the face of tougher building regulations, said Curtis Williams, the city’s director of Planning and Community Environment.
“The provision appears to have outlasted the economic circumstances of downtown development,” said Williams, who also wrote in a recent report that it would likely “exacerbate parking problems.”
Charles “Chop” Keenan and David Kleiman want to use the provision in their respective projects. The developers say the ordinance shouldn’t apply given how much time and money they’ve already invested.
Keenan, a self-described “parking zealot,” is looking to construct a one-story building at 135 Hamilton Ave. With a parking exemption, he wouldn’t have to provide the otherwise required 31 spaces.
“At the very last second, the rules seem to be changing,” Keenan said Monday, “and I’m asking to be grandfathered as you have typically grandfathered projects not only in the pipeline, but way down the pipeline.”
Similarly, Kleiman was counting on the provision to get out of providing all but six of the 20 spaces required for a new mixed-use building at 636 Waverley St. The city’s Architectural Review Board is scheduled to conduct a preliminary review of the project in a few weeks, he said.
“We’re not asking anything that isn’t already existing in the code or hasn’t been offered to other property owners with the same expectations that we have,” Kleiman told the city council.
Council members Sid Espinosa and Larry Klein were sympathetic to the concerns of Keenan and Kleiman.
“I’m a big believer in fairness and equity. I think sometimes we forget the amount spent both in terms of time and costs for people to take projects through our city systems,” said Espinosa.
“We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars here in at least one case, and changing the rules along the way is something that we have avoided in the past I think for good reason and to good measure.”
Klein indicated he would be in favor of granting exceptions for the two projects. Instead of building the requisite spaces, the developers could pay in-lieu fees for parking to be built elsewhere, he said. Williams was charged with figuring out an appropriate amount by the end of the 45-day moratorium.
But longtime resident Bob Moss urged the city council to pass the ordinance without any exceptions.
“Downtown has been full, the vacancy rates for first-floor retail have been very, very low, and the parking spillover (in residential neighborhoods) has been horrendous,” Moss said. “We have a parking problem and I think we should take a close look at how to solve it.”
Council Member Greg Schmid, who recently underwent emergency heart surgery, was not present for the vote Monday.
Email Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com; follow him at twitter.com/jgreendailynews.