Liang - Please Fix Vallco Website to Clearly State What's Going to be on Sept. 18 Council Agenda

From: Liang-Fang Chao 

Date: Sun, Sep 9, 2018 at 5:56 PM
Subject: Please Fix Vallco Website to Clearly State What's Going to be on Sept. 18 Council Agenda
To: City of Cupertino Planning Dept. <planning@cupertino.org>, <manager@cupertino.org>, City Council <citycouncil@cupertino.org>

Dear City Manager,

Curiously enough, there is not one web page which clearly states what configurations will the City Council consider. The public might get the impression that the City is trying to hide the important numbers from the public, such as the total of office space, number of housing units, the total building height, etc.

There is a big contrast between the web pages for Westport Oaks and Vallco.

• " a redevelopment proposal for the existing 71,254 square foot Oaks Shopping Center " - The web page for Westport clearly states that it will replace the Oaks Shopping Center. Why not the Vallco page? What are you trying to hide?
• " 204 housing units, 20,000 square feet of retail space, and 31,087 square feet of common open space on an 8-acre parcel. " - The web page for Westport clearly states that the parameters in retail space, housing units and acreage of the site and even common open space. Why not the Vallco page? What are you trying to hide?

https://www.cupertino.org/our-city/departments/community-development/planning/major-projects/westport-cupertino

The Westport Cupertino development is a redevelopment proposal for the existing 71,254 square foot Oaks Shopping Center, located on an approximately 8 acre site.  The proposed project is described as follows:

1. Development Permit  (DP-2018-05) application and environmental analysis (EA-2018-04) to allow the construction of a mixed-use development consisting of 204 housing units, 20,000 square feet of retail space, and 31,087 square feet of common open space on an 8-acre parcel.

I cannot even find a succinct description of the configurations proposed for Tier 1 and Tier 2 in the Staff Report for the Sept. 4 Planning Commission meeting. Is that by design? What are you trying to hide?

I hope that the perception of deception could be avoided by clearly stating what exactly the City Council will approve. And the history of the project should also be included as the City Staff has always done so well in the past.

Please include the facts that:

• Vallco Shopping Mall was still zoned Regional Shopping and Commercial General TODAY.
• Sand Hill purchased the property in November while it was still zoned for Regional Shopping and Commercial General.
• The Council approved an amendment of 2 million sqft office space and 389 units and up to 1.2 million sqft retail space and no height limit, pending on the Vallco Specific Plan.
• Measure D proposal has 800 housing units, 2 million sqft office space and 600,000 sqft retail space and it was rejected by the voters.
• SB 35 application includes 2 million sqft office space and 2400 housing units. Please explain why SB 35 is considered compliant to the General Plan when the limit is supposed to be 389 units and not the entire 50 acres have to get zoned to have residential use.
• Please clearly state what's in Tier 1 and what's in Tier 2. And specifically what's the maximum total building height.

Please be transparent when communicating with the residents on the largest project in the history of Cupertino.

And please provide justification on why there is a rush to approve the Vallco Specific Plan in one meeting, in case you do, while other cities often take several meetings to deliberate and consider different portions of a project.

Please also provide ample documentation on how the Performing Art Center and the City Hall entered into the supposedly community-driven plan, while other community requests, like ample ground-level parkland and open space and ample retail space for shopping, entertainment, etc. got dropped.

It appears that the final decisions on the public amenities have been done completely behind closed doors and not even discussed in any Council meeting. You have to provide ample documentation and justification for these decisions made behind closed doors if you want to claim this plan as "community-driven".

BTW, the update for the Sept. 4 Planning Commission meeting has a lot of details on which resolutions got approved. But amazingly it managed to avoid the important parameters that people are interested to know, namely size of office space, # housing units, size of retail space, building height, etc.

Please send an email update to all the residents who have signed up with the important parameters for Tier 1 and Tier 2 under consideration. These residents took the time to participate and you owe them an update that won't require them to dig through thousands of pages of documents in order to find out what exactly is being considered.

Thank you.

Looking forward to a clear Vallco web page and Staff Report and email update.

Sincerely,

Liang Chao

Cupertino Resident