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9.B. - Page 5 <br /> the City to prepare a new, comprehensive EIR, at significant cost to the City. In <br /> addition, staff has already recommended and the Council concurred, that <br /> significant community input and a visioning process take place before this type of <br /> amendment occur. <br /> • A second option would be to do nothing at this time, and require that all the <br /> applicants move forward with their own individual environmental review and <br /> amendments (at their own cost and risk). Staff did not recommend moving <br /> forward with this process, as it would be lengthy, and result in a number of <br /> General Plan amendments, of which the City currently has some limitations. <br /> • The third and staff recommended option, is for the Council to move forward with <br /> amendments to the General Plan and the DTPP's MAD standards to better <br /> reflect current market conditions and to rely on the previously certified DTPP EIR <br /> to satisfy CEQA requirements for such amendments. In other words, additional <br /> office development would be allowed under the MAD standards in exchange <br /> increased limitations on housing and/or retail space. <br /> As explained above, in order to rely on the previously-certified DTPP EIR to <br /> increase the MAD in the office category, the City must be able to show that the <br /> potential environmental impacts from the increase in office development are offset by <br /> the avoidance of impacts from the reduction in other MAD categories. To make this <br /> showing, the City will need to prepare an initial study that assesses, for each category <br /> of potential environmental impacts described in the CEQA Environmental Checklist <br /> Form, that the amended MAD levels will not result in new, significant impacts that were <br /> not identified and addressed in the DTPP EIR. <br /> Given that most of the significant impacts identified with the DTPP EIR were related to <br /> transportation, staff started the environmental review process by focusing on the traffic <br /> levels associated with each category of development. At this time, staff has completed <br /> the initial traffic analysis, which determined "conversion rates" between the three <br /> categories (office, residential and retail). The "conversion rates" are used to determine <br /> the amount of the reductions in the MAD levels for residential units and retail space that <br /> will be necessary to allow any given increase in the MAD level for office space, without <br /> resulting in an increase in overall traffic. <br /> The attached Fehr & Peers memorandum explains the methodology used to determine <br /> the conversion rates and provides the specific conversion rates applied by staff to the <br /> MAD levels. Based on the Fehr & Peers' conversion rates and analysis, staff has <br /> concluded that: <br />