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Page 5 of 17 <br />City of Redwood City 1017 Middlefield Road, Redwood City, CA. 94063 Tel: 650-780-7000 www.redwoodcity.org <br />Housing Element Implementation <br />Amendments that would implement the Housing Element cover the following topics: <br />1.Program H1-8: Small Lots – This Program is intended to incentivize development on “small lots”, <br />which the Housing Element defines as development sites of less than one half acre. Small lots can be <br />more challenging to develop than large lots because development standards often create constraints <br />that make development physically infeasible. This program overlaps with other Housing Element <br />programs that are intended to incentivize greater development densities and otherwise remove <br />barriers to housing development. The following proposed amendments would implement Program <br />H1-8: <br />a.Mixed-Use Daylight Plane - Currently, the Zoning Code requires an upper story setback on <br />buildings constructed in a Mixed-Use zoning district (Articles 53 and 54) adjacent to a <br />residential zoning district with the intent of preserving access to daylight for adjacent <br />buildings. The required setback is determined utilizing a 45 degree “daylight plane” <br />measurement starting from 15 feet above the ground at the property line and results <br />in a building design that steps back progressively with each story. The requirement can <br />significantly limit the housing capacity of small, mixed use-zoned parcels due to the <br />reduction in building mass. For residential development, the proposed amendment to <br />Articles 53 and 54 would instead measure the daylight plane starting from 28 feet <br />above the ground at the property line, which is consistent with the maximum building <br />height for single-family homes in adjacent residential (R-1, R-2, R-3) zoning districts, see <br />Figure A below, which show a comparison between the 15 foot and 28 foot daylight <br />planes. This change would still result in a setback of the upper stories in order to allow for <br />access to light for adjacent buildings, but they would be more limited, <br />allowing additional buildable area compared to the current requirement, and thus <br />supporting development of housing on small, constrained lots. Additionally, the proposed <br />amendment would help support a more consistent pattern of building massing at the base <br />of the building consistent with allowable structures in the surrounding area. <br />8.B. - Page 5 of 212 <br />320