Rewriting the General Plan

Walnut Creek’s latest General Plan was adopted in April of 2006 after a two-year long process of public input and review.  The Plan was intended to provide a vision of what the City would be like in 2025.  We’re not even halfway there and much of the plan has been abandoned.  The same goes for various Specific Plans that were intended to cover smaller areas of the downtown in much greater detail.

The City Council has been happy to clear the way for developers of projects that call for raising the General Plan height limits and totally rewriting land use designations.  Other projects sail through the City Commissions with no apparent regard for previously established planning or design principles.

The Landing at Walnut Creek, proposed for the lot at the bottom of the Ygnacio Valley freeway off-ramp, and the 1500 No. California (Scott’s Valley Bank) Mixed Use Development, are two projects where the Council held a “preliminary review” before the projects even started the normal approval process at the City Commission level.  In both cases, the City Council SAID that they weren’t making any formal decisions, but the message to the Commissions was clear – the fact that these projects bear little or no resemblance to the General Plan shouldn’t stand in the way of their approval.

Both projects call for an increase in the General Plan height limit, and both projects call for residential densities at or above what would be allowed by the Multi-Family-Special-High (MFSH) land use designation.  MFSH is the highest density land use designation in the City’s General Plan, and the Plan is quite specific about where that designation applies.  It states that “This district occurs only in the Core Area around Alma Avenue, where the Alma Avenue Specific Plan governs development.”  The Alma Avenue Specific Plan outlined a mix of retail, commercial and residential uses along with a SUBSTANTIAL public park/ open space / greenbelt covering about a fifth of the plan’s land area.  The fact that the Landing at Walnut Creek and 1500 No. California call for similarly high residential densities with HARDLY ANY public space didn’t seem to bother the Council. 

The Council was also unbothered that the 1500 No. California project proposes 165,000 sq feet of Mixed Use development on lots extending into the traditional downtown where the current zoning ordinances would have allowed only 76,000 sq feet of commercial and retail development.  General Plan Action Item 6.3.4, “Discourage residential development in the Traditional Downtown area”, was similarly ignored.  Basically, “whatever a developer wants to build” seems to be the City Council’s idea of a standard.

The City’s Planning and Design Review Commissioners have clearly understood the Council’s direction.

The Planning Commission had no problem approving the Arroyo Apartments – a six story residential structure with 111,000 sq feet of floor area on a lot that the General Plan designated for office use, and where the zoning ordinance would have permitted less than 22,000 sq feet of commercial development.

The Design Review Commission has expressed willingness to invalidate the setback and sidewalk width standards for Brian Hirahara’s 1500 Mt. Diablo Boulevard (Cadillac Corner) project even though those standards were laid down by the Locust Street/Mt. Diablo Boulevard Specific Plan that was adopted only a few years ago.  This corner lot received was thoroughly studied as part of “Opportunity Site 1” in the Specific Plan, and the standards were well known to Mr. Hirahara when he agreed to develop the parcel. 

Design Review was also amenable to a proposal for a slick, modern, three-story high, glass-fronted, Rodeo Drive-style Davidson & Licht showplace a few doors further down on North Main Street - on a parcel that the same Specific Plan says is “intended to be preserved at much the same scale and size as currently exists.”

As someone who actively participated in the General Plan process, I’m pretty disgusted with, though not necessarily surprised by, the way things are going.  Our City Council has always considered their primary objective to be assuring profits for the business and development community.  Nothing is likely to change until the neighborhoods band together and throw the bums out.