Those who wrote made a difference in the denial of 831 Water St. There were definite safety issues with the downhill slant for the access driveway where students of two schools walk and bike ride though. The segregation issue was real also. Writing to Thank the SC City Council is a very good idea.
Now the Santa Cruz Planning Commission will vote on the following this Thursday, Oct 21. You can write by 5 pm tonight or call in during the meeting to state the SQU regulation changes would remove the protections for building to an extreme. We already know more units will be built here in Santa Cruz. To remove regulations with no provisions for making small units affordable opens up the developers to build less than 300 ft units for rent at market-rate which very likely would be used as dorms for UCSC due to the high cost of housing at UCSC.
Within the landscape of these new state laws, if the City adopts the FDU structure and codifying "change" to the SRO regulations, a developer could build over 300 units on an acre in a CC/CM zone with Mixed-Use High-Density use of 10-30 du/acre (with SROs/FDUs not counting as "dwelling units"). This can be achieved by building SROs that are less than 300 square feet, providing almost no open space from the granting of a "waiver," removal of the "mixed-use" requirement of providing commercial space (as proposed in Staff's report), and an additional density bonus "concession" that allows almost twice the height set forth by the zoning. A reminder that City Council and Planning Staff will be under strict new state laws limiting the ability to deny any such extreme waivers.
Here are this Thursday's agenda items for the planning commission: Click on the blue links to see the documents. You will see the Swenson proposed 75 ft building is asking for various waivers to build a high rise building in an area with high traffic. The lot is zoned for 35 ft, not 75 ft. You are welcome to comment on that item also. The planning commission needs to hear from you. Ask for a traffic study to be done on the weekend when there is a backup on those streets! So many units in a high traffic area is not a good idea. Less units are recommended.
https://ecm.cityofsantacruz.com/OnBaseAgendaOnline/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=1794&doctype=1
Write: cityplan@cityofsantacruz.com
What you do matters. It made a difference before and it may make a difference again.
Thank you for caring about what is built in Santa Cruz and how it is built!