Village Center Zone update and SB330
December 5, 2022
Regarding Item 5.1 of the Environmental Planning Commission December 7th 2022: We’re writing to bring to your attention that SB330 bans any change that would reduce a site’s residential development capacity from what it was on January 1st, 2018. It seems like this may apply to the village center designation, which previously was only vaguely defined in the general plan. While it’s good to have specificity in the zoning, it appears that these new more objective plan standards may actually reduce the residential capacity of these sites. To avoid this, the new open space requirements should be paired with higher FAR and/or higher height limits for these sites.
Regarding Item 5.1 of the Environmental Planning Commission December 7th 2022:
We’re writing to bring to your attention that SB330 bans any change that would reduce a site’s residential development capacity from what it was on January 1st, 2018. It seems like this may apply to the village center designation, which previously was only vaguely defined in the general plan. While it’s good to have specificity in the zoning, it appears that these new more objective plan standards may actually reduce the residential capacity of these sites. To avoid this, the new open space requirements should be paired with higher FAR and/or higher height limits for these sites.
If that’s not possible, it would be good to at least have some idea of the feasibility of residential development on these sites. Now that we’re adding more specific, objective standards, it’s possible to do a feasibility study, we need to know whether any new homes will actually be built.
David Watson
Mountain View YIMBY
