By Khalida Sarwari
After months of deliberation on the issue of building height limits, the Saratoga City Council agreed to drop a zoning amendment ordinance that was on the table.
Instead, the council voted unanimously to adopt a motion made by Councilman Chuck Page to more or less leave the city’s zoning code as it is.
Noting that he was reluctant to thank the planning commission and go back to the drawing board, “I think if we are doing this effectively, we’ll find a way of coming up with multiple options,” Page said. “If we are to do this right, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
At the meeting on May 15, the council had instructed staff to:
• come back with additional information about removing the allowance of any future residential units at the Quito Village Shopping Center;
• provide more information on the perceived height of the existing and proposed definition of height in the commercial-visitor district;
• provide information about development and square footage potential from the height limit increase recommended by the planning commission; and
• provide examples of the effect of increased front setbacks.
Three options were presented to the council by community development director James Lindsay. The first was a text amendment that would exclude mixed-use developments from properties along the south side of Cox Avenue. This option would only amend the text in the zoning ordinance and wouldn’t require rezoning the Quito Village center.
The second option would remove mixed-use development as a conditional use in the commercial-neighborhood district and rezone all commercial properties along Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road and the north side of Cox Avenue from commercial-neighborhood to commercial-visitor.
The third option Lindsay presented, and the one initially accepted by most of the council members, was to split the commercial-neighborhood district into two separate districts, excluding mixed-use developments as a conditional use in the second commercial-neighborhood district and rezone the properties along Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road and the north side of Cox.
The ordinance that the council had been considering addressed building heights, setbacks and allowed uses in the commercial-visitor and commercial-neighborhood zoning districts.
Numerous residents showed up at both the May 15 and June 5 meetings to voice their opinions about the ordinance. The majority of the speakers appeared to be members or supporters of the Restore Saratoga group, which broke into loud applause for every speaker that opposed making any changes that would raise building heights.
The reaction prompted Page to suggest to Mayor Jill Hunter that she should ask the audience to stop clapping. Hunter’s response was that “it’s a democracy,” and therefore she could not do that. Page retorted, “Perhaps you now know why only one side comes to these meetings.”
Councilmen Howard Miller and Manny Cappello similarly appeared to be irked by the misinformation surrounding the issue.
“It’s our political action committee working to stir public opinion,” Miller said, referring to a Restore Saratoga survey he said was “poorly constructed, not representative and poorly done.”
Marcia Fariss, a member of Restore Saratoga, was one of 15 speakers who took to the podium. After posing rhetorical questions to the council, she said, “You were elected to represent Saratogans, not developers or out-of-town property owners. Ignoring us would be foolhardy.”
The concern continuously voiced by Fariss and others is that raising height limits will affect the views of the hills, privacy, increased noise and density. They’ve called for keeping commercial building heights at 20 feet and either lowering multi-family heights to 20 feet or eliminating residential as an allowed use in the two commercial zoning districts. Other speakers have also raised concerns about increased crime and decreased residential property values.
Before the issue came to the council, the planning commission made recommendations to raise building heights from 20 feet to 26 feet along Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road, including all rooftop equipment, and increase the rear, side and front setbacks.
The commission also decided to remove the allowance of single use multi-family developments in the commercial-visitor and commercial-neighborhood districts and also to remove the allowance of ground level residential dwelling units in mixed-use developments in both zoning districts.
Other recommendations were to maintain the building height limit in the commercial-neighborhood district at 20 feet, maintaining height exceptions for appurtenances such as rooftop equipment and roof screens, and requiring landscape buffers for commercial uses adjacent to or across from residential uses in the commercial-visitor and commercial-neighborhood districts as stated in the General Plan.
Per the city’s zoning code, the height limit is 30 feet for multi-family buildings and 20 feet for commercial buildings.
Saratoga City Council agrees to drop zoning amendment ordinance
