AgdaPkt 2002-03-25 - Laserfiche WebLink

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IREPOR T Redevelopment Agency Board From the Executive Director March 25, 2001 Subject Agreement and Execution of a Contract for Professional Services with EDAW Recommendation By motion, approve the Agreement Background City staff has recently completed draft versions of two very important draft planning documents that will have positive impacts on the future of Redwood City. The first document, the Housing Element, evaluates housing needs and opportunities of the community. It also outlines future housing goals, objectives, and policies that address certain housing issues. The State has reviewed the document and has requested some minor revisions before it will certify the document. Staff is in the process of making these changes and will present the document back to the Planning Commission and City Council for final review. The second document, the Downtown Area Plan, describes the City's vision for a livable downtown. It outlines various land use concepts, "opportunity sites", an urban design framework, and provides an overview of development strategies. The City Council received the Downtown Area Plan from the task force last year and referred it to the Planning Commission. They will review it and send it back to the City Council with their recommendation. Staff hopes the City Council will be able to adopt the document soon after a "housing symposium" is held sometime in the spring. The housing symposium will provide a forum for decision-makers to understand and decide on the appropriate housing densities and types discussed in the Downtown Area Plan. Staff held a focus group with residential developers in December 2001. All the developers indicated that one thing we could do to facilitate development under the plan was completing the environmental review process. This would save them both time and money. Accordingly, we are recommending the creation of as detailed an EIR as possible. Once the EIRs are completed, it should not be necessary to do any further environmental analysis (or a very minimum analysis at the most). It is the intent of staff to have all the environmental documents in place so when projects are proposed for the downtown they would have been covered by these previous EIR documents. Such a system will provide some certainty for developers and will speed up overall processing time. By doing these EIRs up front, developers will save time and money in the long run, and therefore it would encourage development in the downtown. Staff obtained bids from four Ell:{ planning consultants to conduct the above work. Staff is recommending that EDAW prepare the Environmental Impact Reports. EDAW is the firm that prepared the Downtown AreaPlan and is very knowledgeable of Redwood City. The amount