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I I I ,. In response to Director Claire's questions regarding 'for sale' housing, Mr. Hansen said it included condominiums and townhomes. He said, "In the River Oaks project what you see there is what normally is known as a townhouse or stand alone, one- - attached wall, as opposed to an air space condominium.... Fundamentally, in terms of the look or the vision of this particular area, the quality of product that I certainly have in mind, .. it is the townhouse product." Chairman Hartnett announced that there were no other speaker's cards. Director Ruskin said, "I took a tour Slmday afternoon of several places on the Peninsula and it was very instructive. In addition to the information that I had before, ITom hearings here, from the staff, this tour crystallized some of my thinking. I came to the conclusion that in a certain sense it isn't really whether housing is 'for sale' or for rental that is important, it is really the quality of the development. That being said there is certain key things that allow quality to happen. I was really impressed with the development produced by the Shea Company. When I was down there I realized some of the key elements of this property that were beautifully designed. I had the opportunity to talk to the people who were there. A man who was walking pontificated on how wonderful it was to live there... There were several developments one after another and it was amazing what they had done. It was more than Shea Homes, there were other developments. Because they had looked at the entire area as a whole, what they had achieved was, an interrelated, totally integrated development. You could walk ITom the rental units all the way to the highest, high end apartments or condos, through well designed thoroughfares or streets. It had a rental building that faced - Montague Expressway and it had a below market development which was near Montague and near the business park area, and placed there for a reason. Even the business park was quite attractive, and for below market units it was really quite appealing. I had the opportunity to look at other 'for sale' type developments and that is when I realized that it didn't matter really whether something was to some extent for rent or for sale, it mattered about the quality of the development, because the 'for sale' developments that I saw were all boxes in a sense. They were boxed in and looked in on themselves. There were no walk ways, they didn't relate to anything around it, they just provided room for little alleys for the garages and places to walk to your car. I think one of the reasons that that occurred with those developments was the matter of scale, it was the size. If a builder is building on a small size and wants to build something profitable and it is not related to other properties, he or she is going to build something that really doesn't have the amenities that are possible. Those properties that I thought were really unappealing had certain common characteristics. They had much less landscaping, they looked in upon themselves, they didn't integrate with what was around it, and they were just generally less appealing. What I have concluded is similar to the remarks of Mr. Warren and Mr. Hansen. Critical mass is a really important matter. That only if we tied off a substantial amount of territory here and designed it over all, do we have the hope really of beginning to create something we can really be proud of when it is done. We need to really understand given the - SPECIAL REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO.1 APRIL 21,1997 MINUTES Page eo. 421 PAGE 5