Egads! It’s market based planning!
Today’s Planning Board meeting is tomorrow’s City Council appeal and tonight was going to be no exception. The Planning Board was supposed to hear (again) Alameda Towne Centre’s proposal for a planned development agreement (PDA) that will entitle the final 49,000 sf of commercial space the centre has requested. The item has been continued at the request of the applicant.
But don’t fret, the meeting is actually going to be more interesting, because there’s a workshop on form based codes. In what has to be one of the funniest staff reports in recent memory, the staff report is short, essentially, it says “If you want to be informed before the meeting….Google it.”
Don’t take my word for it:
At the meeting, Mr. Ross will give a short presentation on form-based zoning and will be available to answer questions. In preparation for the meeting, staff has attached some informational material on form-based zoning. Additional material is also available at www.formbasedcodes.org and a variety of other Internet sites by typing in “form based code” into your preferred browser search engine.
Awesome! I’m looking forward to the next City Council Packet which I will expect will read: “There are some rising concerns around the budget and the affect of machinations at the state level. We won’t go into them here, if you want info, try a lexis-nexis search through the library. Type in “California state budget problems” in to the search box and read the articles that come up.”
But back to the Towne Centre PDA. I’m hoping that when this comes back to the board, Harsch will either make a strong case as to why they actually need to have 49,000 sf entitled to make their centre operate or they will just say thanks, but no thanks and move on. The process so far has been a little wishy-washy for my taste, sure, who wouldn’t want to have additional square footage to play with, but at this point, either there need to be plans that necessitate it, or there aren’t and the discussion is premature. Maybe that’s why it’s been continued to another time.
And don’t miss the 4pm Special Meeting of the planning board at Bridgeside Center which is a “Site visit to view the Bridgeside Shopping Center project in built form and discuss conditions of approval.”
Leave a Reply