REPORT TO CITY COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Public Hearing: Action on a General Plan Amendment to Remove the Lawrence Station Phase II, Central Expressway, and De La Cruz Focus Areas
Report
BACKGROUND
The City's General Plan has nine Focus Areas that includes four Focus Areas south of the Caltrain corridor and five Future Focus Areas north of the Caltrain corridor, as shown in the Focus Areas map (Attachment 5). The Focus Areas represent locations with opportunities for more intense development and encourage improvements and new development tailored to the character and quality of each area. In practice, Focus Areas have represented locations where industrial/office land uses could be and have been converted for residential development opportunities. However, since the initial Focus Areas were introduced in the General Plan, development has changed due to market demand and the City's certified Housing Element now delineates where future housing could be located.
The proposed General Plan Amendment aligns with the changing development patterns and Housing Element and would remove the following three Focus Areas from the General Plan: Lawrence Station Phase II (west of Lawrence Expressway), Central Expressway, and De La Cruz because these areas are not ideal locations for housing due to the existing industrial and office land uses.
More specifically, the Central Expressway Future Focus Area has a dense concentration of data centers that would be unlikely to convert to housing and be incompatible with housing should it be developed. In the De La Cruz Future Focus Area, some of the properties are in an undesirable location under the San Jose Mineta International Airport flight path, and the area represents many smaller light and heavy industrial properties that house viable support businesses such as machine shops, auto body shops, welding, plating, and the like in the City. And as for Lawrence Station Phase II, the owners of the industrial and office properties in t...
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