Planners approve a tricky housing plan on University

By Jeff Kearns

After several rounds of hearings, meetings and study sessions, planning commissioners tentatively approved Bill Hirschman's plan to develop a 4-acre parcel at Los Gatos-Saratoga Road and University Avenue last week--but the commission still has to take one more look at the final draft resolution next week before the application is passed on to the council, which has the final say on the plan.

After more than 30 different revisions, which have ranged from 55 to 22 units over the last two years, the version approved June 9 stands at 26 units.

Commissioners tweaked the plan somewhat during the hearing, and got Hirschman to agree to splitting up four units clustered in the northeast corner of the property into eight smaller rental units, leaving the size of the four buildings unchanged.

And by increasing the total number of units on the site, the commission also got one more below-market-price unit out of the deal, for a total of three.

Many Edelen Avenue residents had vigorously opposed the project at past meetings, but just four neighborhood residents showed up to oppose the project, citing anticipated traffic problems.

Traffic has been the biggest hurdle for Hirschman's project from the start. Many Edelen neighbors said they feared that the already congested intersection of Los Gatos-Saratoga Road and University Avenue would become more clogged and more dangerous.

The only vehicle entrance to the project will be from University Avenue, just over 200 feet from that intersection, but part of the plan Hirschman presented to the town calls for widening the northbound University Avenue approach to that intersection and adding a right-turn lane.

But even though Hirschman called that improvement to the intersection a community benefit, he still pointed out to commissioners that all four traffic reports by town traffic engineer Mark Wessel indicated no significant impact on the nearby intersection.

The planning commission did, however, accept the intersection improvements as a community benefit, along with a public pedestrian access to the new development and public open space interspersed throughout the site.

Traffic became such an issue during the approval process, that a suggestion made during one of the two study sessions for the town to do a comprehensive traffic study on the downtown area became reality. That study is set to get underway later this year, once all the new stores at Old Town have opened their doors.

Some residents said that Hirschman's application should be put on hold until that study is done, probably around Christmas, but commission chairwoman Laura Nachison said she didn't think that it was "fair or reasonable to hold the project hostage."

The traffic report prepared for the project estimates that the development will generate about 200 trips each weekday; "staff believes that the traffic concerns associated with this project may be overrated," the Planning Department's report said.

Commissioners voted 6-1 to approve the Planned Development (PD) application, with Kathryn Morgan voting no.

Morgan said she liked the project. But while she said Hirschman did a better job of articulating the community benefits--which must be offered before any PD is granted--and that the traffic probably wouldn't be as bad as some had feared, she said she still couldn't give her support because the community benefits were things that would happen anyway.

Once approved by the Town Council, which will likely hear the application in late July or early August, the project has to come back to the Planning Commission for the Architectural and Site hearing. The number and location of units on the site is set by the PD application commissioners approved last week, but the exterior of the houses is not.

The decision represents a major step for Hirschman, who first started putting his proposal together about two and a half years ago, and brought it to the town for the first time in 1997.

He was the fifth in a string of potential developers--including SummerHill Homes and Pinn Bros. Construction--who approached the town about developing the site, but dropped their bids after sizing up various potential headaches associated with the site, including traffic and neighborhood opposition.

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