Artwork by Chris Spaulding

Dave Flick's new building on W. Main Street will fill a spot that's been an empty lot for years.

Flick gets approval for retail building

By Jeff Kearns

Planning commissioners approved a new one-story retail building at 50 W. Main St. May 26, which will fill the vacant lot at Lundy Lane that's been empty for more than three decades.

Developer Dave Flick, who's already put up two mixed-use buildings on E. Main Street, says he's working out the details of a lease with a potential tenant and plans to start construction in August and finish before the end of the year.

The 3,582-square-foot building was designed to fit in with its historic neighbors and will be built out to the sidewalk. It meets the town's parking requirements, with 14 on-site spaces behind the building on Lundy Lane and 21 in the parking district.

According to Flick, the site has been vacant since the early 1960s, when the fire chief condemned two old buildings on the site and ordered them demolished. The old buildings formerly housed a variety of tenants, including the Los Gatos Times-Observer in the '40s. Flick says his new building is designed to look similar to the original buildings on the site.

Flick is in the process of working out a lease with Schaub's Meat, Fish and Poultry. Owner Dave Schaub, whose only store is at Stanford Shopping Center, plans to open a second store in Los Gatos. Schaub, a 40-year Los Gatos resident, originally ran the store with his father in the '50s and '60s, when it was located at two different addresses on N. Santa Cruz Avenue.

The commission also approved another Flick application: a request for outdoor seating at Kelley's Coffee. Kelley's wanted a modification to its conditional use-permit that would allow seven tables and 14 chairs (from the existing total) on the outside patio of the Flick Building at East Main Street and College Avenue.

In other action, commissioners continued for a second time an application for a new apartment complex at 615 Blossom Hill Road--this time because of high noise levels.

The project site, next to Highway 17, doesn't meet town guidelines for noise, and commissioners said they couldn't approve the negative declaration for the project if the road noise can't be mitigated.

One possibility would be to build a 24-foot-tall sound wall along the freeway, but architect Rodger Griffin says that's most likely not in the cards.

The town's minimum standard is 55 decibels, and the state's is 60, so if the apartments can't quiet the road noise somehow, then a focus environmental impact report (which only examines one aspect of a plan) would be required.

Griffin and developers are scheduled to sit down with planning staff and try to figure out what to do next before the project comes back to the Planning Commission June 23.

The commission also approved an amendment to the downtown specific plan approved by the General Plan Committee May 12, and passed the amendment on to the Town Council for final approval.

The amendment changes a section in the general plan from limiting downtown parking structures to four feet above grade to one whole level of parking.

The amendment also rearranges the numbering of some town parking lots. The sequential numbering for the town lots has eroded over the years, and the new system would give them numbers 1-8, instead of 1,2,3,4,6,9,13,15.

In Planning Department's report to the commission, the situation was even bad enough to earn a rarely-used exclamation point in the normally bureaucratic prose: "The current method of identifying the various public parking lots in the downtown area does not make sense!"

Police Report

Columnist notes differences between writers, engineers

LGHS seniors prepare for grad night

Obituaries

Picture From the Past: Orchard heritage

Sports Briefs

Los Gatos sophomores star at CCS track championships

Wildcats lose heartbreaker at CCS volleyball semi-finals

West Valley baseball player named MVP