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8.A. - Page 251 �lanningcommission�a7redwoodci , .org cc: council edwoodcit .or ]une l 7, 20�2 Dear Chair Borgens and Members of the Planning Commission I oppose this Finger Avenue Planned deve�opment and ask�he P�anning Commission to recommend that City Council aeny the app�ication. It's important for me to explain to all concerned where I'm coming fram. I do not oppose develapment per se. Far backgro�.nd, I was an enthusiastic supparter of Paul Powers' plan ta build 17 high-rise towers on his property. He got wind of k�ow T felt from my former colleagues who are naw at Singer and Associates, Adam Alberti and Sam Singer. Sam is known affectionately as The Fixer. As a result af Paul's appreciation for my ski�ls, contacts and attitude, he hired me as a PR cansultant to Marina Shores Vil7age, to reacl� out ta the bicyc�ing community. We lost. What was Paul's nexf move? He negotiated and he re-designed. Paul walked and biked thraugh neighborhoods, knocked on aoors ana came up with a sca�ed-down alternative plan. Everybody approved. He developed Marina One. I wish him every success. What disappoints me here is that our new neighbor, Mr. McGowan doesn't knock on our doors, say hello and ask us how the neighbarhaod works, what we think of its iaok and feel, ask us for aur aesthetic judgments. Of course, he has no obligation to do so, bnt in my experience, developers who are community builders do just that. Ynsteaa, his meetings with us (which occurred one or two times and years ago) were to tell us what he intended to do, and if we didn't like it, we would just have to "get used to it." Taugh taZk! He has chosen to create a subdivision-style development akin to what might be just fine for Redwood Shores, use the Planned Development provisions to gain exceptions to what are normally required for subdivisions in our city, and then plunks it down in the middle of my neighboxhoad without providing any reaeeming community benefits that T am aware of. On the one hand, I couid accept and might even welcome a radical design such as, say, a Frank Gehry might come up with, because it could be judged as a work of art, or a true Planned Develapment-style project like the Creekside Green alternative because of what it does to enhance the riparian corridor and provide viewscapes of the historic Finger Farmhouse. Such radicalism would suit me fine. A radica.l pZan to cram nine houses where three primaYy dwellings now stand does not. There's been a lot of back and forth abaut aesthetics. I'm amused to see when an opinian is cansidered"objective" and when"subjective."For my money, my aesthetic judgments and t}iose of my 75 neighbors who have written to you is just as abjective as the subjective judgments of a commissioner, a consultant or public serva.nt. We neighbors are the experts on the subject of visuad degradation here. {After I wrote that I read in�he