THE SPECIFIC PLAN
WHAT IS A SPECIFIC PLAN?
A Specific Plan is a regulatory scheme governing land use in a particular geographic area (“Plan Area”). A Specific Plan, just as the more familiar zoning rules do, establishes rules which determine what uses are allowed in a particular area and what form those uses may take.
The Plan Area affected by the North 40 Specific Plan is the approximately 44 acres bounded by Lark Avenue to the south, Highway 17 to the west, Los Gatos Boulevard to the east, and Highway 85 to the north.
Among other reasons to create and adopt a Specific Plan for the large undeveloped North 40 area is to allow the Town to establish a unified concept for uses within the Plan Area (the “Vision Statement”) and to impose greaterrestrictions on those uses than may otherwise be available using a standard zoning scheme.
HOW IS A DEVELOPMENT APPLICATION DIFFERENT FROM A SPECIFIC PLAN?
Once the rules governing the development of the Plan Area are set, then property owners within that area may file an application to develop parcels they control pursuant to those rules. As would be the case with a property owner seeking to develop in a residential zone who must conform to the Town’s’ Residential Design Guidelines, property owners seeking to develop in the Plan Area must conform to the Specific Plan rules. Ultimately, it is the job of the Planning Commission and Town Council to determine whether they have done so.
Just as is the case within a residentially zoned area, the existence of a Specific Plan does not require that allproperties within the zone or Plan Area be developed at once. So, for example, a person who buys a vacant lot in the residentially zoned Almond Grove need not wait for all houses in that zone to be built before he or she can build. Zoning schemes are designed to allow a certain type of development to occur over time and simply require that when built, developments within that zone be consistent with its rules.
Similarly, the North 40 Specific Plan assumes that development of properties within the Plan Area will occur over time, consistent with the requirements of the Plan. Thus, persons owning an acre, a half-acre, 10 acres, or 40 acres within the Plan Area, could each submit individual applications for development of their property and the Town would be obligated to review each application on its own merits.
In this case, a single property owner has filed an application to develop 20 acres of the 44-acre Plan Area. That application must be evaluated independently of any other application that may or may not come forward. Just as the owner of a residential lot is not required to wait for the rest of the homeowners to build, so an owner of land within the North 40 Specific Plan Area is not required to wait for the rest of the property owners to build.
DOES THE SPECIFIC PLAN ALLOW HOUSES TO BE SPREAD OUT OVER THE ENTIRE PLAN AREA?
Yes.
The North 40 Specific Plan Area is divided into three Districts, the Lark, Transition, and Northern Districts. Each of them allows residential development. Just as there are different rules and standards for residential development in the Almond Grove and the Hillsides to address different zone characteristics, there are different standards for housing types, styles and densities in the different Districts of the Plan Area. The 270 housing units (+35% state-required density bonus for a maximum of 364), may be built anywhere within the Plan Area.
The development application now under review seeks permission to build all 270 units on property controlled or owned by the applicant in the Lark and Transition Districts. That is the property owner’s choice. The Town need not allow it, but if it does choose to limit the number of houses in those two Districts, it must place those lost units elsewhere in the Plan Area as required by the Housing Element or designate property in a different area of town where that housing can be accommodated. (See discussion below).
STATE AFFORDABLE HOUSING REQUIREMENTS
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT INCOME CATEGORIES FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING?
California law requires Los Gatos to plan for its “fair share” of affordable housing needs for the Bay Area, and empowers the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to determine that fair share by assigning a “Regional Housing Needs Allocation” (RHNA) to each Bay Area jurisdiction. Los Gatos is required to plan for, not construct, 619 housing units across four income categories. The number of units in each category for which Los Gatos must plan appear in parentheses:
Very low 31-50% of AMI* (201)
Low 51-80% of AMI (112)
Moderate 81-120% of AMI (132)
Above moderate over 120% of AMI (174)
619
* “Area Median Income,” defined as the “theoretical income of the average household (family of four) in a given geography.” The AMI for Santa Clara County is $107,100.
In order to meet its RHNA obligation under state law Los Gatos identified specific properties throughout Town which could support development of housing, including 13.5 acres within the North 40 zoned at 20 units per acre where housing may be developed “by right.” In other words, an owner of property within the North 40 Specific Plan Area has the right to develop housing at 20 units per acre on property he controls, just as the hypothetical Almond Grove lot owner has the right to build a single house on his lot. Town decision-makers cannot prohibit that “by right” development, but they do have the discretion and obligation to make sure that any development proposal conforms to the rules and guidelines applicable to the zone.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE 20 UNIT PER ACRE ZONING?
State law requires that Los Gatos include in its Housing Element an analysis of sites identified for affordable housing that “demonstrate density standards to accommodate a jurisdiction’s regional need for all income levels, including lower-income households.” In meeting the requirement, the Town has the option to either undertake a complex review of economic factors such as market demand and feasibility, or to adopt a “default density,” which is a zoning standard that the state has “deemed appropriate to accommodate housing for lower income households.” For a suburban jurisdiction like Los Gatos, that standard is 20 units per acre.
Stated more simply, state law assumes that sites zoned at 20 units per acre can accommodate affordable housing, so by zoning land within the North 40 Specific Plan Area at that density, Los Gatos has legally met its obligation to identify a site where housing can be built to meet its RHNA requirements. That said, the Council always retains the right to reduce the number of houses on the North 40, but once that site becomes unavailable for housing, adifferent site in Town must be identified in order to comply with state law.
TRAFFIC AND EIR
CAN A NEW EIR AND TRAFFIC STUDY BE DONE?
Once an Environmental Impact Report has been prepared and certified for a project, California law strictly limits the circumstances under which any new or supplemental reports can be required. Such a report could only be required if the Town is able to make the finding that there is “new information of substantial importance, which was not known and could not have been known with the exercise of reasonable diligence at the time the previous EIR was certified.” See California Code of Regulations, Title 14, Sections 15162(3), and 15164.
In other words, the Town would have to conclude that traffic impacts and conditions existing today that are a result of the proposed North 40 development and other development were not known and could not have been known when the EIR was certified in 2014.
While in theory it may be possible to attempt to re-open the EIR, all of the issues being raised now were considered in the earlier analysis. The existing EIR takes into account not only the proposed development of the North 40 Plan Area, but also the cumulative effects of approved development within the Town, including the Albright/Netflix project – and outside of Town, including the proposed Dell Avenue, Good Samaritan expansion, and Samaritan medical office projects.
IS THE CURRENT TRAFFIC ANALYSIS ACCURATE OR CREDIBLE?
The difficulty with any purported traffic analysis, and with that done for the North 40 Specific Plan, is that it is based on the Institute of Traffic Engineers (ITE) Manual. The manual consists of standardized charts, developed from national data, that assign particular traffic counts to particular uses. Some at the Study Session asked whether “local standards” could be used – the Town has adopted as its local standard the data collected in the ITE Manual.
Given the apparent disconnect between the ITE data and day-to-day experience with traffic in Los Gatos, I asked that the Council receive additional traffic studies using methods of analysis different than those used by ITE to evaluate North 40 traffic impacts. Those analyses were completed and the results – concluding that development of the North 40 consistent with the Specific Plan would result in fewer car trips than did the ITE analysis – were presented to the Council before it voted to certify the existing EIR.
It is important to keep in mind that any traffic impact analysis is always limited in accuracy by both the use of standardized data, and by the time period over which it is conducted. For example, a study evaluating impacts of high school traffic at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday in October would be dramatically different than one completed on the same time and day in July. This type of limitation is what makes it so difficult to determine the exact traffic impacts of any project, and what causes so much frustration when the results of the analysis are seemingly at odds with personal experience. Unfortunately, frustration and personal experience are not always legally sufficient under CEQA to require new reports.
Michael Silva
Thank you for your time and efforts bringing this information forward,