Adoption of the final leg of a zoning code update will end the slew of planned developments the past several years.
The Santa Clara City Council unanimously adopted the zoning map at Tuesday night’s meeting. Single-family residences already saw an update last year, but the remainder of the city needed the zoning map to put the new changes into effect.
“Zoning should implement the form and function of the general plan; that’s really the intent of zoning, but that hasn’t happened in Santa Clara in a long time,” said Reena Brilliot, community development director. “A big reason for that is because we have had a mismatch between zoning and general plan on several sites in the city.”
Although the city has been working on the update for a long time, state laws made it necessary. State law now mandates that cities’ general plans match their zoning code. Also, another law bars cities from reducing residential density levels below 2018 levels, necessitating a few tweaks to the code.
New districts include mixed-use, office, industrial, high-density residential, and public/quasi-public. The update also cleaned up a few peculiarities in the code. That clean-up included privacy assurances for accessory dwelling units, rules for food trucks on private property and curb stepbacks.
Modifications will still provide property owners up to a 25% deviance from the standards, Brilliot said, but the update should greatly reduce the need for variances.
Perhaps most prominently is that the city will no longer need to designate developments as “planned developments,” a catch-all designation that has become in vogue in recent years.
“It was a long-standing issue, but it actually got exasperated when we adopted our 2010 general plan because we created new general plan designations in the city, but what we didn’t do is create corresponding zoning districts,” Brilliot said. “Because of that, when people came forward to redevelop properties, they had no choice really than to propose [planned development] zonings.”
Council Member Kevin Park has been particularly critical of the city’s propensity to grant general plan amendments to allow for planned developments. However, Brilliot’s explanations seemed to allay his concerns.
Mayor Lisa Gillmor was absent from the deliberations. The new zoning goes into effect Aug. 16.
The use of the phrase “high-density residential” has the implication of creating a slum, or a ghetto, in residential neighborhoods. Apply this concept to the residential areas a couple of blocks North of Stevens Creek Blvd and see the reaction of those already living there.