The city held two workshops last Saturday 4/21 for North San Jose. The morning session was a discussion of urban design. The afternoon session was a parks planning discussion. I've attached my notes from the sessions below. If anyone has more notes, please reply! Once the city has posted their presentations online, I'll bundle up all the responses with the official documents and put them on the RONA website. Oh, and did anyone get a copy of the parks session questionnaire? -- -- Laura Carns -- web maintainer, http://www.ro-na.org Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:17 pm Show Message Option View Source Use Fixed Width Font Unwrap Lines Laranth laranth Online Now Send IM Send Email Send Email North San Jose Urban Design Guidelines Public Workshop Saturday April, 21 2007 Morning Session 10:00am - 12:00 pm Agenda 1. Introductions -- City Staff (5 minutes) 2. Purpose of the Workshop -- City Staff (10 minutes) 3. Presentation -- WRT/Solomon E.T.C. (45 minutes) 4. Table Discussions (30 minutes) 5. Feedback from each table (30 minutes) 6. Summary Questionnaire * Where do you live? * Are you an owner or a renter? What type of home? (mobile home, single-family detached, townhouse, apartment) * Where do you work? * Do you ride public transportation? How often? * How many cars are there in your household? * How do you use the VTA light rail line? * Where do you do your grocery / general shopping? * Where do you go for recreation? Which parks do you use? * What urban character would you like to see in North San Jose as it grows over the next 25 years? What types of streets, what mix of uses, what type of pedestrian environment? Suggest examples. * What key items may have been missed by the team in their presentation, and should be addressed in their study? Notes from the Presentation * Presentation will be available online/emailed to attendees. * WRT/Solomon E.T.C. (hereafter "Solomon") have been contracted by the city of San Jose to produce urban design guidelines for the North San Jose (hereafter NSJ) area. They have been trying to do two things at once: get a handle on NSJ for the guidelines, and quickly ramp up to provide quick feedback on the projects currently in the pipeline. * Figure Ground Drawings (black out the buildings on a map) highlight buildings and street sizes and orientations. Solomon notes that NSJ is unusual in an urban design because the public spaces are described by landscapes as well as buildings, rather than just the streetfront building faces. This has forced Solomon to come up with new tools to help their designers analyze the environment. * There are city propal to develop the trails along Guadalupe & Coyote Creek. * NSJ is not designed for public usage currently. The public spaces and interfaces between the lots are "disconnected". For example, you have to drive across the street to lunch. Or from the mobile home park, you have to drive around out to a main stree to get to an adjacent office building. * This happened because NSJ was built up from industrial low-density spaces, and as it moved to commercial buildings, and commercial campuses, it stayed disconnected. * Since NSJ land is already owned privately, can't challenge the idea of large land holdings & large developments, but through design guidelines you can encourage better connections between developments. * What can we move towards? Examples: Castro St. in Mountain View, University Avenue in Palo Alto. * Then the presentation did a comparison of the density of different housing types and industrial/commercial types. The type of residential most likely to develop in NSJ is "4 over 1" stacked flats over a parking podium, which gives 45-65 DU/AC. * It came up that Target is the proposed big box retail going in at 237 & N. 1st. * Their commercial design proposed guideline: walkable, landscaped streets, with a build-to line along the street so that the building and the street interact. * Their residential proposed guideline: small blocks, integrated parks, no exposed garages. Proposed a 1:1 setback:height for the relationship to existing residential areas. The presentation was really interesting because it talked about why things don't work in the area with the street grid and how it developed that way. It was also a different "urban design" point-of-view from the city's "just make it work". Notes from the table session: * Groups of 4-8 split off into tables, with Solomon and city representatives at each table. The tables were asked to give feedback on the presentation and questionnaire and discuss the issues in the area. Then the tables were asked to present a summary of their most important items and discussion to the group. * At my table, the Solomon and city representatives were very interested to hear the "use cases" -- where we shopped, that we didn't take public transit & why, what was lacking in the area in public services. * Some themes from other tables: * light rail isn't useful: too slow, doesn't go the right way * retail lacking in the area * there's no "heart" to the area -- be it a school, community center, eccentric downtown, or major park * there's an inherent conflict between the city's hard minimum of 55 DU/AC and the guideline setback of 1:1 with existing residential: which one will win? * schools still haven't been addressed * emergency services haven't been planned out * Lots of support to reuse Agnews as community center and school location. Parks and Recreational Facilities Community Meeting Saturday, April 21, 2007 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm Purpose: to gather community input on the character and type of park facilities that should be in future neighborhood and community parks, to serve a community of 70,000 to 90,000 residents. Agenda 1. 5 minutes Introductions 2. 5 minutes Purpose of the meeting 3. 5 minutes The City's Park System 4. 5 minutes PDO-PIO 101 (Greenprint & Park Ordinances) 5. 5 minutes Typical elements of neighborhood and community parks and recreational facilities in San Jose 6. 10 minutes Review of the proposed North San Jose policy area plan a. Vista Montana Housing Opportunity Site b. Baypointe Housing Opportunity Site north of Tasman Drive c. Baypointe Housing Opportunity Site south of Tasman Drive d. Montague Housing Opportunity Site along North First Street Legacy Partners small park site e. River Oaks North / Sony/Irvine Housing Opportunity Site f. River Oaks South / Cadence Housing Opportunity Site g. Brokaw Housing Opportunity Site h. Rincon South Housing Opportunity Site 7. 55 minutes Table exercise 8. 40 minutes Review of table exercise 9. 15 minutes Gerneral discussion 10. 5 mintues Next steps Proposed Facilities Standards Community Aquatic Center 1 per 70k-90k population Community Center 1 per " Softball Fields 1 field per 10k population Soccer Fields 1 field per 10k population Group Picnic Areas -- 50 + 1 area per 15k population Cricket Fields dual use over other sport fields Tennis Courts 2 courts per 20k population Bocce Courts 1 court per 20k population Horseshoes 1 court per 20k population Community Garden 1 acre per 15k population Skate Area 1 area per 70k-90k population Dog Park 1 area per 70k-90k population Minimum Facility Sizes Community Aquatic Center 3 acres with parking for 100+ Community Center 40,000 sqft -- 3 acres with parking for 150 + Softball Fields 2.5 acres with parking for 40 Soccer Fields 2.6 acres with parking for 40 Group Picnic Areas 0.06 acres with parking for 40 Cricket fields dual use over other sport fields Tennis Courts 0.4 acres for 2 courts Bocce Courts 0.03 acres for 1 court Horseshoes 0.03 acres for 1 court Children's Play Area 2 acres per 30k population + parking Skate Area 10,000 sqft with parking for 10 Dog Park 1 acre with parking for 20 Presentation Notes * First Presentation was given by Dave Mitchell, Parks Commission. * The presentation will be available online. * Plan is to create a "Park Plan" as an addendum to the Vision NSJ plan. * Covered Greenprint and the city's relevant park ordinances. * Vision NSJ will bring 70k-90k new residents -- that's like creating a new council district! * It will need a new community center, and 1 large community center is easier to staff than many small centers. * They hope to get: aquatic center, sports fields, community gardens, and good linkages to the trail system * Need to double the parklands by 2020 to meet Greenprint promises. * Need 100 acres of regional parks * Community centers should include a gym, teen, senior centers. * New development provides the funding for new parklands, but park maintenance is out of the general fund. * "levels" of parks: neighborhood park covers 0.75 mile radius community park covers 2 mile radius regional park covers 5-10 mile radius * At previous meetings, NSJ residents have expressed a desire for more passive parks; eg. landscaping, relaxation, garden areas. * City has had some problems where parks aren't considered "public" if they're too surrounded by planned developments -- that's why they like to have public streets on all sides. * NSJ is going to need: 8 neighborhood parks 1-2 community parks 1 community center 1 aquatics center 1 central plaza area to act as the heart of the community trail network * Maintenance is a general fund obligation (and unfortunately the general fund is not feeling too rich these days...). Only $10k/year/acre exists for park maintenance. A subcommittee is considering creative funding options, like partnering with developers or creating special assessment districts. * Second Presentation was given by a Solomon representative. * This one showed examples of parks in the city, landscaping, interaction between public/private spaces, the relative sizes of features (eg tennis vs soccer). * They did mention that there are strict guidelines for landscaping on the levees to protect the levee integrity -- no one wants a flood! * There are currently 2 parks in NSJ: * Moitozo Park, 5.6 acres; aka the "North Park" park * Rosemary Gardens, 1.4 acres; located south of 101 Notes on the table sessions * again, break up into tables and discuss, just like the morning session * Asked to give feedback with what features we wanted in each park, and where we'd like centralized resources like a community center, etc. * Feedback from the tables on the Sony park was very consistent: everyone wanted a quiet, passive, intimate park with a kid's playground. * Two ideas for the Cadence park: sports, and as a quiet stopover along the trail system * Support for getting Agnews as the community center site. * Baypointe is by the mobile homes and should have things to attract the older kids. * Interesting idea to make the intersection of River Oaks Parkway and Guadalupe River a mix of parks and retail and trail stopover, to make it the "hangout" destination. * Feedback to the city on Moitozo: 1) it doesn't feel public! 2) too far away from us, hard to get to 3) we're uninterested in plain old flat grass