visual mockups of the building<\/a>\u00a0from Watry Design, Inc. \u2014 with a concrete base and rust-colored, perforated metal cage \u2014 have caused mild uproar from residents.<\/p>\n\u201cAdditional parking in downtown will be helpful, but when I saw the pictures of this, I was actually kind of shocked at how ugly that block structure is,\u201d said resident Mike Asher, who spoke at the meeting. \u201cThey seem thoughtful about it, but the end result, my gosh, that would be such an eyesore in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond the garage itself, the developers plan to create additional pedestrian amenities and display public artwork. The small portion of the lot across the street from All Saints Episcopal Church will be temporarily developed into a plaza with greenery and native plants, according to Ken Hayes, founder and principal architect with Hayes Group Architects.<\/p>\n
String lights will illuminate the plaza at night, and a pedestrian paseo along the interior of the property will direct people and bicyclists to another entryway into the garage. The route abuts the restaurant Tai Pan, which will also reap some of the benefits of the garage \u2014 namely, its trash receptacle area.<\/p>\n
Hayes said the goal is to help clean up the alleyway overall and make it more pedestrian friendly.<\/p>\n
As for the public artwork, the city enlisted Amy Landesberg, an Atlanta-based artist who plans to create an \u201cintricate steel design\u201d on a portion of the Hamilton side of the garage, according to city associate planner Kristina Dobkevicius.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The art is) intended to bring awareness to the vulnerable plant species and create a meaningful connection between the built environment and the natural environment and landscape,\u201d she told the council.<\/p>\n
Although city officials were not always so keen on the garage, councilmembers celebrated the design and the milestone on Monday. Vice Mayor Greer Stone said it\u2019s unusual for a city to be able to take pride in a structure like a parking garage. Councilmember Keith Reckdahl seconded the point.<\/p>\n
The main hangup for others appeared to be the project\u2019s cost \u2014 now projected to be $41 million \u2014 and the feasibility of constructing affordable housing on the site\u2019s plaza in the future.<\/p>\n
When the garage was first proposed in 2018, the same architects planned for five stories with underground parking and no housing. Seven years later, the council redirected the designers to develop a new parking structure with six stories and a reserved area for affordable housing on-site.<\/p>\n
Councilmember George Lu said previous iterations of the affordable housing portion did not appear to use the space efficiently. While the city\u2019s master housing planning document envisioned up to 44 affordable homes on the site, the developers are now projecting 15, as well as 25 parking spaces in the adjacent garage that are designated for future tenants. Just 4,048 square feet are available for the housing portion of the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems unlikely that we can build really good, high-quality housing on that site until there is potentially statewide code reform, and single staircase reform,\u201d Lu said. \u201cIn my mind, I\u2019m keeping the optionality for that plaza open, and not personally rushing to put housing there if there\u2019s a prospect that \u2014 maybe in several years, when building codes change \u2014 we can actually put better-laid out housing there.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story originally appeared in Palo Alto Weekly<\/a>. Riley Cooke is a reporter at Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online focusing on city government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spurred by a legal challenge from a downtown developer, Palo Alto leaders on Monday gave the go-ahead on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[712,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-465375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-centerpiece","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}