One Broadway Plaza Meeting Notice - Tonight at 5:30 PM

[Jeff Dickman]

Good morning everyone,

Attached is City's notice for tonight's online Planning Commission meeting for the One Broadway Plaza project.

Consider watching and participating in the meeting via the call-on option.

Please understand that whatever the Planning Commission recommends to the City Council, for its upcoming April 21 meeting, may very well become the City Council's final decision for the project. If you fail to make your voice heard, the project may proceed ahead with little or no direct benefit to the community.

Some of the key community concerns about City's process for the project, and the development, include:

1. The developer wants to pay his way out of having affordable apartment units as part of his request to convert of 19 floors of office to 19 floors of apartment. Consider asking the Planning Commission to recommend to the City Council that it work with the builder (in a robust manner) to include the required affordable apartment units, and that those units be evenly distributed among the market-rate units.

2. The Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the project is 20 years old, They City has not asked the builder to prepare a new EIR to account to the many changes in the downtown since 2003 (the builder did prepare an Amendment to the EIR describing the change from office to apartment). OBP will generate at least 3000 new daily vehicle trips. There is, at the least, one dozen other apartment projects planned in the area, These projects will add 1000 more units to OBP's 402 units. If the OBP project fails to account for this other traffic, the Planning Commissioners will not understand the true impact of OBP on vehicle movement along Main Street and Broadway, and the cut through traffic into the adjoining six neighborhoods including Logan, Willard, Lacy, the Downtown, French Court, and French Park. OBP needs a new EIR, and the Planning Commission should ask the developer to prepare one,

3. The One Broadway Plaza project is not an emergency project. It does not play a role in helping with the world wide virus outbreak, nor does offer much in the way of new property tax revenue. OBP will negatively impact traffic, and the health of people living in the adjoining neighborhoods. Tell the Planning Commission to delay this hearing until after the Coronavirus outbreak passes, to a time when the community can participate in person, and perhaps after November when the City has a new City Council and new Mayor.

4. The previous Development Agreement (DA) for the One Broadway Plaza has expired. Development Agreements (usually) describe non-required cash contributions, amenities or other benefits from a project to a community. Projects are commonly required to build new roads, and upgrade infrastructure, like sewers. However other benefits, even important ones like traffic mitigation and parks, may not be required, or are minor, as is the present circumstance for OBP.

One Broadway is only lightly required to mitigate for its traffic impacts. This is because the City Council that approved OBP (including Mayor Miguel Pulido and Councilmember Jose Solorio) failed to negotiate for these important benefits for all of the adjoining neighborhoods. Request the Planning Commission recommend to the City Council that it work with the developer to prepare a new DA, to include traffic mitigations for each of the 6 adjoining neighborhoods (above), to insure the project includes on-site affordable housing, and a requirement for the developer to purchase land for a new neighborhood park, and to design and construct those improvements. Feel free to add other ideas to your letter, email or call-in comments.

Holding this meeting during the world-wide pandemic, where American deaths are expected to exceed 100,000, for a project which has no significant benefit to the community, but will impact our community, is a misstep by our leadership. When the November election arrives, you will have the opportunity to remember those who failed the public, and those who acted to protect it. One measure to distinguish the two, is by their vote. Did that elected or appointed person approve the conversion of 19 floors of office (which is mostly unmarketable) to 19 floors of apartments (which is mostly marketable), and also obtain the key public benefits mentioned above?

Keep score how our elected and appointed officials vote tonight, and again on April 21, for November. I will.

Thank you,

Jeff Dickman

714 240 0883