AgdaPkt 2000-08-28 - Laserfiche WebLink

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9B1 Further, office as a permitted use in some zones is a disincentive to housing. Housing can not occur in all zones unless the Zoning Ordinance is amended to allow housing as a permitted use. The recommendations before the City Council on August 28, 2000 taken together, are intended to "level the playing field" and result in housing production, while still allowing a significant production of office square footage. We think the long-term solution may simply be to re-zone commercial land to residential use, but this will be discussed at greater length by the Planning Commission during the General Plan review. To support the Work Force Housing Production Ordinance, recommendations are included in the Interim Urgency Ordinance for Zoning Ordinance Amendments to apply the Residential Combining District to the CB zone and allow residential in other commercial and office zones. A companion recommendation would exempt residential units from floor area ratio calculations. These recommendations are addressed in Report 1. b. Units Required Regarding the specifics of the Work Force Housing Production Ordinance for Redwood City, it is a two-pronged approach. The ordinance would require the production of housing for office projects greater than 10,000 s.f. in size on one acre sites at a ratio of one housing unit for each 2000 gross square feet of office space approved (this is the 0.5 ratio discussed earlier). The units may be built either on or off-site. This formula is based on a reasonable approximation of the amount of housing necessary to satisfy 22 percent of the demand for housing created by the average number of employees generated by the average office development. The one-acre threshold is chosen based on several factors. First, one-acre sites are currently attractive for single tenant development of 70,000 square feet of office and are therefore at risk of being lost to office development. Second, the larger the number of housing units, the more efficient the management (the costs to manage 30 units are not one-third the cost for 90 units). The one-acre threshold was selected to provide larger sites and therefore the potential for some economies of scale. The 10,000 s.f. threshold is chosen to exempt small office projects. This threshold also provides a relationship to the companion report (Report 1) on definitions, uses and development standards. A conditional use permit requirement is recommended for office greater than 10,000 s.f. in most districts. An example of application of the ordinance is as follows: A one acre parcel in the CG district could accommodate a 30,500 square foot office (with the recommended 70% Floor Area Rati02). The Work Force Housing Production Ordinance would require 15 dwelling units to be built. If the units are built on-site they may (as an incentive) be built at an average of 640 s.f. If the units are built off-site they 2 Floor Area Ratio (FAR) is defined in Report I, It is the ratio between the gross square footage of building and the site area, It provides a simple yardstick for the amount of development possible on a site. 4