Palo Alto Commons expansion in limbo after community opposition

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Palo Alto Commons, an assisted-living community for seniors on El Camino Way, is in a showdown with its neighbors over plans to add 18 units to its complex, with critics arguing that the proposed addition will cast shadows on their yards and worsen a parking shortage.

Frustrations and anxieties over the project dominated the Planning and Transportation Commission’s review of the project on Feb. 28, with about 20 residents from neighboring properties voicing their concerns. Citing the opposition, the commission opted not to advance the project and demanded further design revisions.

The commission’s unanimous vote creates a setback for the project at 4075 El Camino Way, which will now how to go back to the drawing board. The decision comes several months after the proposal received a generally positive reception from the City Council during its public unveiling last August. Council members generally agreed at the time that Palo Alto Commons serves a critical need and that its proposed addition is, by and large, modest in scope.

Rather than building up, the company WellQuest, which operates Palo Alto Commons, is looking to add new units by filling in existing recesses in the back of its three-story, 121-unit building, which was constructed in 1989 and which is now undergoing various renovations. While council members acknowledged concerns from residents in nearby single-family homes about shadow impacts, most lauded the proposal for bringing a sorely needed amenity to Palo Alto: housing for convalescent seniors.

Even so, some council members urged WellQuest to do more public outreach and to work with neighbors to accommodate their concerns. Chief among those is the shadows that the building additions would cast on the backyards of homes along Wilkie Way, near the back of the building. Vice Chair Ed Lauing noted that the building’s developers recognized the shadow impacts by creating a tiered design. The building tapers down to two stories and, ultimately, one story next to the single-family homes — a feature meant to ensure that nearby homeowners would not lose access to sunlight.

“That’s a pretty important aspect of living here in Palo Alto and that’s why the step-downs were here to begin with,” Lauing said. “I don’t see a thing that’s changed in terms of how people want to live now versus when they were put up.”

Following that meeting, WellQuest had hosted an open house and made numerous revisions to the project. This included changing the locations of some of the units and adding four additional ones. Steve Sandholtz, president of WellQuest, told the commission during the Feb. 28 hearing that the company tried to accommodate the community’s concerns by finding new locations for units, including a site between Palo Alto Commons and the Avant — a neighboring senior community — and near the Goodwill store just east of the property.

Sandholtz acknowledged that the project would still encroach into the “daylight plane” of nearby homes at five different locations. This encroachment, however, is now limited to 1 foot and 8 inches in all cases, he said.

He emphasized the need to upgrade the property and said the goal is to “maintain a very high service level for the residents there for an extended period of time.”

“We are investing in the community to make sure that it continues to serve the senior population here in Palo Alto to the best ability possible,” Sandholtz said.

The commission, however, broadly agreed that WellQuest needs to do more to make sure the community next to Palo Alto Commons doesn’t see its quality of life diminish to accommodate the new units. Many of the residents who addressed the commission at the Feb. 28 hearing said that it would do just that. While they maintained that they do not oppose the addition of units to Palo Alto Commons, they objected to the location of these units.

“It’s going to be a gigantic block of a building, overshadowing and overcasting and overlooking my yard,” said Mona He, a Wilkie Way resident.

The council had recommended that WellQuest consider a significant design revision: adding a fourth story at the front of the building, thereby obviating the need to fill in the recesses near the single-family homes. The developer’s architects explored this idea but ultimately rejected it for being too costly and complex.

“For one, it would require the existing elevator to be removed and replaced with a new one,” wrote Irwin Partners Architects in a letter from the firm to the city, saying that building up would also require replacing other building systems, including HVAC equipment.

“The whole roof would have to be torn down and rebuilt,” the architects wrote in the letter. “That would require us to relocate all of the residents on the 3rd floor (and maybe more) during the construction. All of that is assuming that we would even be able to structurally support a new floor.”

That argument didn’t sit well with the neighbors. Mona He and others argued that the neighborhood should not be penalized just because WellQuest, a for-profit corporation, does not want to pay for a design that would accommodate the existing neighborhood.

“To me right now, it’s lopsided,” He said. “We are the losing side because there’s no benefit provided to the neighborhood. And they increased their traffic and we lost our privacy.”

Garrett Chan, who also lives on Wilkie Way, agreed.

“It shouldn’t be on our back. It shouldn’t be at our cost to do this,” Garrett Chan said.

Chan was also one of many neighbors who complained about the neighborhood’s already insufficient parking, a problem that they feared would get worse if the project advances. While Sandholtz noted that the building’s residents rarely drive, neighbors and planning commissioners suggested that many of the cars in the neighborhood belong to staff and visitors and that WellQuest has not done enough to steer these cars into its underground garage.

Kevin Ji, who represented a group of neighbors at the Feb. 28 meeting, said that he often finds it difficult to find parking when he gets home.

“We feel it’s pretty difficult and a bit of a public nuisance on our street, which is a little bit difficult to manage,” Ji said.

The city has broad discretion when it comes to rejecting the Palo Alto Commons plan or demanding revisions. The project was developed through the “planned community” zone process, which allows developers to exceed zoning regulations in exchange for negotiated public benefits (in this case, housing for seniors). While most new residential developments are now subject to streamlined approval processes, changes to a planned community zone still require public hearings in front of the planning commission, the Architectural Review Board and the council. 

In discussing the project, planning commissioners agreed that WellQuest needs to do more to make sure that the benefits it gets from the addition — namely, higher profits — don’t create a problem for neighbors.

“The money they’re going to get isn’t coming from nowhere,” said Commissioner Cari Templeton. “It’s being taken in its own way from the neighbors who are going to lose value while the owners are gaining value. It’s not clear there is any justification from the city’s perspective to enable that.”

Vice Chair Bryna Chang also said she is concerned about the shadow and parking impacts of the proposal. Chang suggested that WellQuest consider reducing the number of new units to make the project more palatable for the community.

“It doesn’t make sense to me to have a public benefit that rests solely on the back of seven or eight houses,” Chang said.