Redwood City considering amending downtown plan to add office and decrease residential

[Jon Schwark]

OK, first I'd like to quote Adina's Peninsula roundup from the other day regarding Redwood City:

Redwood City.  They approved a downtown plan about 5 years ago, and downtown is swarming with cranes, about 2000 housing units and good amounts of office. A growing j/h imbalance is leading to a lot of displacement of the lower income, largely latino working class population. They just approved direction for a community benefits plan that will create funding for BMR housing and transportation demand management programs to make downtown function properly with a lot more people.  They will soon be working on a Specific Plan for El Camino Real (likely focus on mixed use housing/retail).   They're getting NIMBY pushback to all the cranes - help will be helpful on the new plans, and the new transportation policies.

Then skim this article for background:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/09/29/redwood-city-prepares-plan-for-dealing-with.html?page=all

and now a recent article:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/04/02/shakeup-in-redwood-city-office-pipeline-changes.html?ana=twt

"As I reported last year, developers have been placing big bets on downtown Redwood City as the next Peninsula hot spot, and tenants are responding ( hello, Box). In fact, so many projects came into the Planning Department that requests exceeded the development allowanceunder the 2011 downtown plan (which provided for about 500,000 square feet of net new space). At Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting, commissioners were slated to consider a plan amendment that would have allowed a bit more office capacity in return for reducing residential and retail allocations."

but then maybe it didn't happen:

"Because the existing allocation is enough for the projects that remain in the pipeline, the city is recommending not expanding the office cap at this time, Aknin said. At the meeting, planning commissioners took no action on the plan amendment."

Still, just the idea that they need to shift gears into office space, and would have if they thought the precise plan was any impediment at all to constructing new offices...

AND DESPITE THE FACT THEY HAVE PROBABLY LISTED THOSE HOUSING UNITS AS DEVELOPABLE SITES FOR THEIR RHNA NUMBERS TO QUALIFY FOR ASTATE FUNDING (just guessing here?)

THis raises serious big red flags for me, and I think we need to learn more about it /keep tabs on it

I hand it off to southlanders :) 

Jon