Housing advocates cry foul over change
It just got easier for developers to build a hotel in Los Altos.
The Los Altos City Council modified its code to allow hotels as a conditional use in the city's areas previously zoned only for multifamily residential uses.
That's good news for the developers who want to build a Marriott Courtyard Hotel on the current site of the Four Seasons Motel at the corner of El Camino Real and Los Altos Avenue. Now they won't have to include a housing element as part of their hotel plans.
And it's good news for the city because it allows more options and more control over what can go on those sites, said City Manager Phil Rose.
A conditional-use permit "gives the absolute right to deny a project," said city attorney Bob Booth.
The council voted this change, 3-1, at its meeting July 13, in front of a standing-room- only crowd. Councilman King Lear was on vacation.
But it's not good news for Councilwoman Kris Casto. She voted against the change and worries about losing options for multifamily housing.
"We need the thread of responsibility for housing," she said.
Before the council modified the zoning, anything that went on the three R3-1 sites on El Camino Real - Four Seasons, Tree Farm and Los Altos Garden Supply - had to include some affordable housing.
"That's not a good result," Rose said. "As a city, we're in the business of building good neighborhoods." And six units of housing with a hotel is not a good neighborhood, he said.
City Planner David Kornfield agreed. "That doesn't make a good housing community," he said.
With the council change, hotel proposals for R3-1 sites are not required to include affordable housing, Kornfield said. But it could still happen. And with a conditional-use permit, the city could ask for it.
The Los Altos Planning Commission had recommended that the R3-1 zoning be left alone, to include affordable housing.
The city rezoned the areas in 1995 "to fix up our affordable housing" Kornfield said, by requiring some affordable housing on the El Camino Real R3-1 sites.
"The problem is not with zoning," Rose said, "but with the result." The mix of housing with a hotel is "creating lesser housing in an incompatible use," he said.