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7A Page 111 neighborhood concems regarding the proposal for a five-story residential development at 885 Woodside Road; as well as comments made at the Peninsula Park workshops last fall. Planning Division staff anticipates that it may be difficult for the community to reach consensus with respect to appropriate building heights both within and outside the downtown core. With respect to the Draft DPP, height concerns have been expressed in three primary contexts: 7. Overall Plan Height 2. Transition Heights {EI Camino Real, Brewster Avenue, and Maple Street) 3. Height in the Historic Downtown Core Staff has taken these comments very seriously and explored options for al! of these cases. A discussion of each of these contexts is provided below and can also be found in brief in the Issue Matrix in Attachment B. Overall Plan Heighf: With respect to overall height, the Pian calls far athree-story minimum height and maximum heights that range from four to twelve stories, building up from the edges toward the center of the downtown. In some cases, lower streetwall heights and other transitional techniques are required and are further discussed below. Overall there is public concern about build-out intensity and the potential traffic and air quality impacts associated with denser urban development; reduced solar access on downtown streets and open spaces; and the genera( concern that increased heights will forever change the character of Redwood City's historic downtown core. The height limits proposed in the draft DPP were recommended to the City by Freedman Tung and Bottomley and the Concord Group as a build-out strategy that could achieve the Plan goals and to make development projects economically viable. Staff believes that it is important for the public to understand that Downtown build- out will be much more varied than Draft DPP diagrams suggest, based on a build- out to the proposed maximum height limits on each parcel within each block. Not all buildings will have the same height. It is understood that shadows wi[I increase in the vicinity of taller buildings; however, the DPP requires architectural treatments of taller buildings resulting in tapering of the upper portions. Build-out will ultimately be controlled by the Maximum Allowable Density threshold to be established by the City Council. In addition to this cap, a number of other significant factors, described below, will reduce the potential for new structures at maximum height limits in many instances and will also result in variety in building height and upper-story spacing that will maintain attractive sky views as we!! as sunny public spaces at certain times of the day. Downtown is comprised of mostly relatively small parcels, and in some cases they are irregularly shaped due to the cross-grid street pattern. Taller buildings require more parking. Parking is much more difficult to provide on small and irregularly shaped parcels. Taller buildings also require implementation of more expensive construction methods. In some cases, these obstacles will be overcome through parcel aggregation and development to the maximum heights allowed. However, it is