Cal Waters Remodel: Comments to the Planning Commission

Dear Planning Commission,

Please deny the request for a special use permit in the case of planning application PA16-027.

The highest and best use of the site in question is residential and its current zoningreflects this fact. This designation represents the ideals of our City and should not simply be disregarded because it is inconvenient for the current occupant.

Even besides the desirability of housing instead of light industrial in this vibrant downtown location, the scope of the project is underwhelming. It lacks the vision, sustainability and density City Master plan anticipates.

Please uphold the zoning standards the City has set for the property in question and do not allow such an extreme exception to be made for this decidedly unexceptional project.

Kind regards,

Letter to the City Council, Hillsdale Redevelopment

Dear City Council,

I am writing with regard to the project slated for Hillsdale Mall, PA 15-024.

While development of the Sears building into a more modern, aesthetic and sustainable gathering space is an admirable goal, there are several aspects of the project and application which concern me.

In particular, at the February 9, 2016 Planning Commission meeting when I raised the matter of why it is important to employ union labor for the project the applicant’s representative dismissed my concerns as unfounded in his response. This turns out to be misleading, at best. There have been multiple labor demonstrations against the project and no concrete commitment to employ a union general contract.

Given this misguiding presentation to the Planning Commission, the applicant should be held accountable to their claims of goodwill towards labor in a written and enforceable agreement as opposed to word of mouth. By showing this support for union labor the Council can show support for equitable business practices which do not compromise workers for the financial benefit of owner/operators.

As for the traffic concerns of the community group spearheaded by Barsetti family, I am in favor of directing traffic towards El Camino entrances. In particular, maintaining the 30^th Avenue entrance in face of increased demand should require thorough analysis. 1% seems like an incredibly optimistic projection if in fact, as the applicant purports, there is high consumer demand for the proposed project. Also, as a movie theater is planned, one can expect large batches of cars leaving at the same time which will have a different, and likely more negative, impact than if the cars were leaving at evenly dispersed intervals. In addition, a movie theater will have patrons arriving and departing at much later times than the current retail establishment. These factors should be taken into account of any traffic study which weighs into the Council’s decision on this matter.

Many thanks for your time and consideration,

Letter to the Planning Commission, Hillsdale Mall Redevelopment

I am writing in regard to the proposed development at Hillsdale Mall, PA15-024.

While in general I find the plan attractive and well-conceived, my concern is it does not fully utilize the space available. Making this project into something genuinely mixed use would be a greater benefit for the area.

Ideally, this development would have a housing component. Housing, particularly affordable housing, is desperately needed in San Mateo. The urgency of the matter has been recently acknowledged by the City Council. Also, locating high density housing near Hillsdale station is a great means of allowing households to commute without adding vehicle miles traveled (VMT). VMT correlate with negative air quality and reduced quality of life for the community.

Since the northern edge of the property in question borders existing multi-family structures adding units adjacent would not create a significant difference to the neighborhood. In fact, blending new housing into a redevelopment could reduce the industrial feel the existing parking lot.

Comprehensive land use demands more than a shopping destination. Retail is important, but it is not at the heart of a community. Please request housing consideration from the applicant.

Letter to the City Council, the Housing Crisis

City Council Members,

I am writing to thank Council Members Lim and Bonilla for standing up for those in desperate need of protection from immediate displacement. To those on the Council who shied away from the decision to even bring to vote the idea of Emergency Protection, I implore you to reconsider.

Please commit to protecting our City’s renters. We are not losing just the lower middle class, we are losing the entire middle class, including teachers, city workers and pretty much anyone earning under $100,000+ a year. If this persists, broad ranging, difficult to reverse consequences which will negatively impact the entire community.

At this point, further study equates to inaction. Inaction equates to continued evictions. Doing nothing, even in the name of fact finding, is not a passive decision.

Some Basic Definitions - Rent Control versus Rent Stabilization

I am not merely a concerned citizen, but a real estate professional with many years of experience in residential property management. Several of these years were spent in New York City, where I managed properties covered under rent control and rent stabilization, as well as those without any rental restriction.

In addition, I had the good luck of finding a room in an apartment protected under rent stabilization. Despite working full time in a job paying well above minimum wage, without this 7’ X 14’ foot windfall life in Manhattan would have been impossible without a subsidy from another source, a very common reality for many in desirable cities. These experiences gives me a broad perspective of the various forms of rent regulation which are being discussed.

Rent Control

Despite the outrage, no one is proposing rent control. Rent control in New York City, for example, is only held by those individuals who have resided in their units for over thirty years. These rents are never increased without extreme difficulty to the long term detriment of landlords. In one pronounced example, a studio apartment in my company’s portfolio had been passed to a young man from his grandparents at a rate of $90 a month, less than the cost of a 30 day Metro pass. It is for this reason, rent control has been discredited and discontinued.

No one is proposing rent control on this order, so the hysteria invoked around this issue is misplaced. Please ignore it.

Rent Stabilization

Rent stabilization does what is title says – it stabilizes rent. Real estate is an inherently cyclical market, particularly in the Bay Area, making renters vulnerable to displacement. Stabilizing rent does not deprive landlords of all claim to profit, only creates a structure where the ambition for oversized profit is not allowed to decimate existing communities. Limiting annual rent increases to 10% a year, for example, would still allow landlords to profit well above inflation while still allowing long term planning on the part of the renters.

Stabilizing rent will prevent our citizens from receiving ridiculous rent increases which are tantamount to eviction. This is a good thing.

Rent Stabilization Means Market Stabilization

Less than a decade ago San Mateo suffered along with the rest of the world due to the collapse of a major real estate bubble caused by unrestricted real estate speculation. In the last crisis, high levels of debt justified untenably high prices for property. In the crisis we are creating at the moment, the upward trajectory of rent encourages speculation on a similar order.

At the September 8^th meeting there was much consideration given to the difference between so called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ landlords. Most are pretty good. Some are very bad indeed. Unfortunately, a laisse faire economic policy, which doing nothing surely amounts to, inherently favors the bad one. Let me illustrate.

There are many tools a real estate investor can employ to determine how much she is willing to spend for a property. Many are exceedingly complex and cover thousands of inputs over dozens of spreadsheets. But a very simply, generally accepted measure of value is using what is referred to in the industry as a Cap Rate. A short explanation of this term, to quote developer and columnist John McNellis, “the yield the buyer would receive by purchasing a certain property.” Full article – http://news.theregistrysf.com

It looks like this:

Let’s use the example of a 10 unit building with 5 2-bedroom units and 5 1-bedroom units owned by Good Landlord Smith (GLS). GLS has owned the building for over 25 years and personally maintains it. GLS has wanted to retire and move to LA to be closer to the grandchildren for about a decade ago, but did not move fast enough around 2005 and the market crashed. So GLS waited. Now, GLS can get out from under the obligation of being a property owner and set up a few trust funds for the family.

GLS rents his 1-bedroom units for $1350 and his 2-bedroom units for $2500. After expenses of about 35% annually the building is returning $150,150. GLS figures the in this aggressive market investors would be willing to settle for a 5% cap rate and does the math, putting the property on the market for $3,000,000.

Another Good Landlord (AGL) is interesting in buying a multi-family building. The numbers put forth by GLS are found to be acceptable and AGL makes a full offer.

A second investor then looks at the property, So-So Landlord Brown (SSLB). SSLB, like AGL, feels 5% is a good cap rate and sees an opportunity. Even without pushing area rents to their limits a fresh can of paint and a 25% rent increase per unit brings the Net Operating Income (NOI) to roughly $187,700. SSLB does the math and is willing to go up to $3,753,750 to buy the property but offers $3,500,000.

Keep in mind, all the while, these units are serving as people’s homes. But we are more concerned how the math looks to them at the moment. So let’s keep going.

Finally, consider a third investor, Big Bad Relator Inc. (BBR). BBR is not willing to settle for a 5% cap rate. BBR also has no qualms pushing rents as far up as they will go. Given the age and condition of the property BBR figures it might not get 100% rent increases, but feel with aggressive marketing a 75% increase is achievable. BBR also plans to keep a very tight reserve fund and will therefore have expenses of only 30% a year. Based on these projections the NOI is going to be nearly $283,000. If BBR pays $5,659,500 for the building it will match the 5% cap rate projected by its competitors. They offer GLS $4,000,000. If this offer if accepted and they hit their numbers, the property will cap out above 7% annually, assuming rents never go down.

Property values are going sky high – what can be so wrong for the City about that, some may ask; besides the sudden mass displacement of existing residents, or course. To this I can only respond, Lord have Mercy on all our souls if less than a decade after an overpriced-real estate fueled economic bubble broke we, as a society, proceed to act as if the resulting Great Recession was already an irrelevant blip in history which could never happen again.

When it comes to operating a motor vehicle, there are good and bad drivers. We do not make the laws for the good ones, hoping the bad will follow along. Rent protection is a means to reign in the antisocial practices of bad landlords while protecting the market share of those who are good, or at least so-so.

Just Cause Eviction

David Lim has requested a just cause eviction order, not a no cause eviction order. The numerous drug-dealing horror tenants described at the September 8^th meeting would not be protected under such a decree.

Therefore, the notion of just cause eviction should not be controversial, never the less construed as a frightening prospect or form of government largesse. Just cause eviction is a critical tool towards meeting the needs of renters in dire economic predicaments as well as an expression of humanity towards those who are being subject to economic displacement.

Why The City Council is Justified in Protecting its Renters?

It is understandable people like to profit from a windfall, such as this robust rental market. But I truly believe it is the right and obligation of the San Mateo City Council to recognize landlords are purveyors not of a luxury good but a fundamental need. The right of people to housing should supersede the right to aggressive profiteering in a time of crisis.

Where can one find justification for the above statement? No less an authority than The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has upheld the right of legislative bodies to protect the public from unfettered capitalism by altering contract terms which undermine the public good.  In one such interpretation the Louisiana Governor and Legislative passed an order prohibiting insurance companies from summarily dropping citizens with month to month contracts for flood insurance after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, despite the terms of the initial agreement. SCOTUS has regularly agreed that in dire times legislatures are permitted leniency in regard to contracts.

The Ultimate Fallacy of the Argument against Renter Protection

In order to agree with the argument against renter protection you have to believe the owners of investment real estate in our area are currently more vulnerable than the people dwelling in the rental units. This cannot be true in the vast majority cases.

Conclusion

Our lower and middle classes should not owe their existence to generous landlords who choose not to raise rents to their highest possible limits. They should instead be protected by their Council Members who, recognizing the value of working class families, create policies to secure their ability to remain within city limits.

Kind regards,

Kara Cox

Letter to the Planning Commission, Central Park South

May 12, 2015

Dear Planning Commission,

Please reject the current proposal for Central Park South, PA14-044. The primary reasons I object to this project are:

1)     Detrimental Impact on Public Safety

2)      Real and Potential Damage to Existing Trees

3)      Negative Impact on Quality of Life in San Mateo

There are several components of these complaints.

PUBLIC SAFETY

·         Traffic - on 9^th Ave. is already very dense during commute hours. Cars heading east on 9^th toward 101 back up from the stop sign at Delaware, across the tracks and into the intersection at 9^th and B. Adding hundreds of new drivers here is a public safety hazard because it increases the potential for cars being hit by Caltrain while crossing in the chaotic condition which exist. The developer’s traffic analysis ignores this potential. After Caltrain electrification, the number of trains passing during peak hours is expected to increase. This will mean more stops for railroad crossing (each train presently stops here twice going south and once going north) and subsequently even more backup from the intersection at 9^th and Delware into the train tracks. Without a grade separation, this intersection is already over capacity.

·         Despite the claims of the developer’s traffic reports, it simply does not make sense that by increasing the number of parking spaces in the area existing cyclists and pedestrians will not be impacted. More cars inevitably translates into more traffic, which negatively impacts pedestrians and cyclists unless provisions such as bike lanes and protected intersections are implemented. Unless the developer can assure us its end users will utilize alternative transit, we cannot call this development Transit Oriented Development (TOD) regardless of where it is located.

TREES

·         The south side of Central Park is lined with very large trees which form an essential border between the park and the site in question. I AM EXTREMELY CONCERNED THE EXCAVATION FOR THE UNDERGROUND PARKING AND FOUNDATION WILL DESTROY THE ROOT SYSTEMS OF THESE TREES. These trees are City property and must be protected. We should not merely cross our fingers and hope they are preserved fully intact during such an invasive process.

·         There are 16 existing heritage trees on the site in question which give wonderful bucolic feel to the neighborhood. Heritage trees are more than plants – they are complex ecosystems which develop over the course of decades. Replacing them is not as easy a matter as planting a new tree, especially if it is a fraction of the size. In addition, there are two small groves of redwood trees at the entrance to the parking lot of the existing bank. I believe they should all be preserved. Redwood trees do not have the deepest root system, but rely on one another for support via other redwood trees, forming an essential network. Removing any one of these trees could negatively impact all other redwoods in the area.

QUALITY OF LIFE

·         Please do not add more density around Central Park! It is a rare and irreplaceable garden respite from urban life in San Mateo. Large, high buildings looming above it diminish the beauty of this unique natural setting.

Kind regards,

Kara Cox, San Mateo Resident

Cool Cities Letter to the City Council & Park and Recreation Commission, Central Park Master Plan

                                                          

                                                                                  

May 5, 2015

This letter is submitted on behalf of the members of the San Mateo Chapter of the Sierra Club Cool Cities, an initiative to address local issues impacting climate change, as well as connect grassroots environmental champions. The matter of the proposed changes to the Central Park Master Plan were discussed at an open meeting on April 22, 2015.

Dear San Mateo City Council and the Park and Recreation Commission,

Thank you for taking public comment on the proposed update for the Central Park Master Plan.

Overall, the sentiment of the group supported improvements to the existing facilities and grounds as opposed to any major changes to the park’s current plan and diverse functionalities.

Below we offer a more detailed vision, but to summarize, the interventions we support are:

1)    Water reductions measures

2)    Building a greener, and more aesthetic and accessible parking            structure and recreation center

Those interventions which we strongly oppose are:

1)    Removal of any trees, especially heritage

2)    Converting the southwestern corner from a group picnic area to a         parking lot

We thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,

San Mateo Cool Cities

We Support

1)    Water Improvement

As is becoming increasingly apparent, water is a precious resource in California. We believe the city of San Mateo should demonstrate a commitment to reducing water use in Central Park. This can be done by:

·         Replanting certain beds with native plants which do not require regular watering

·         Use sensors to indicate when sprinklers should be used

·         Decrease, or do not increase, the square footage of lawn

2)    Building and Structural Improvements

While generally resistant to major changes to Central Park we acknowledge the parking structure and community center could use some significant capital improvements, such as:

·         Seismic upgrades to the parking structure and tennis courts

·         Better accessibility parking for the recreation center

·         A new recreation building after an evaluation of community demand

·         Green building and sustainability principles guiding all new park construction

We Do Not Support

3)    Tree Removal of Any Kind

The Central Park Master Plan should provide more explicit verbiage protecting the parks many mature trees. On hot days, the mature trees are critical for keeping the park cool enough for use. Please improve protection to the park’s tree by:

·         Explicitly prohibiting the removal of heritage trees except in cases of disease

·         Improve park signage to draw attention to our most significant trees

4)    Paving Over the Southwestern Picnic Area

We strongly disagree with the proposals which locate a parking lot in the existing picnic area at the southwestern corner of the park. We contend:

·         The large, centralized picnic area allows for multiple groups to use the area simultaneously and it should not be broken up

·         Paving over any area of the park should be strongly discouraged

·     The few additional parking spots provided do little to meet overall demand, while doing a great deal of damage to the parks footprint and amenities

Letter to the Planning Commission, New Central Park Master Plan

Tuesday, March 25, 2015

Dear Planning Commission,

Yesterday evening I attended your meeting on the proposed new Central Park Master Plan. While I made comments then, I wanted to write a brief letter to follow up, taking in consideration the final comments of the Commission, which I watched from home online.

Baseball Diamond and Tennis Courts

Organized sports are an important way for our citizens to get outside and stay healthy. We need more of these features not less. The substitutions proposed at other parks are further away from many neighborhoods. Given complaints in San Mateo about traffic, the need for more people to drive within town should be discouraged. Also, generic athletic fields are not the same as an actual ballpark. Scale down the bleachers, but please keep the organized sports where they are currently situated.

Train

It is wonderful to have a little train for the younger children, however making it a more dominant feature seems overly ambitious. I am concerned about how this will impact access to the children's playground, as well as safety, particularly in the Community Center Option. Under this scenario a child playing in the 2-5 year zone would be in an entirely different, fenced off area from a second child playing in the 5-12 year zone. As people often have children of varying ages, this distinct a separation between playgrounds is totally impractical and unsafe for many families.

Parking

Please do not decrease the existing parking, but spare our park the impact of any more. The cost for additional parking seems way too expensive and invasive for the return on investment. Despite the gripes we hear regularly about lack of parking, open space is more scarce than spots to put a car.

Plaza

A  large, cement feature does not enhance the character of the park as a retreat from the urban space of downtown. Comparisons to Redwood City do not persuade me. The Plaza in Redwood City is often rented to private events and corporate parties. Should this come to pass in San Mateo, it would be a horrible set back to the general public who would actually lose park space despite a stated objective of gaining more.

Self Help for the Elderly

There is a demonstrated benefit to this organization. Should they be displaced from Central Park, it would be to the benefit of the City to find suitable accommodation for them in the downtown area.

Bathrooms

The one point of the new plans I have only praise for it is improving the existing restroom as well as providing another option or two.

Finally, I very much agree with comments from Commissioner Massey urging we respect the existing uses of the park. Please help it maintain its historic character as well as its current user base. Do not alienate the existing daily users by moving forward with unproven proposals which may not in fact enhance the user experience for our citizens in the long run. As many said last night, let’s not expend a great deal of City revenue ‘fixing’ a park which is beloved as it is now.

Kind regards,