The goal is elevation

On tonight’s Planning Board agenda are the facade designs for the Alameda Landing retail.

Here’s the Safeway and the floor plan for the Safeway.   Looks to be about the same overall layout as a typical Safeway, maybe a touch smaller at 46K sq ft compared to the South Shore Safeway which is a little less than 60K sq ft.

Cottage Food industry

Last year the state legislature signed into law the California Homemade Food Act which essentially allows people to make food stuffs in their home kitchens and legally sell them.   This is also known as “Cottage Food Operations”.    Before you freak out about salmonella or anything like that there are limitations on the types of foods you can make it your home, such as:

• Baked goods without cream, custard, or meat fillings,such as breads, biscuits, churros, cookies, pastries, and tortillas
• Candy, such as brittle and toffee
• Chocolate-covered nonperishable foods, such as nuts and dried fruit
• Dried fruit
• Dried pasta
• Dry baking mixes
• Fruit pies,fruit empanadas, and fruit tamales
• Granola, cereals, and trail mixes
• Herb blends and dried mole paste
• Honey and sweet sorghum syrup
• Jams, jellies, preserves, and fruit butter that comply with the standard described in Part 150 of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
• Nut mixes and nut butters
• Popcorn
• Vinegar and mustard
• Roasted coffee and dried tea
• Waffle cones and pizzelles

Giving me the shingles

Tonight the Neptune Pointe parcel is up before the Planning Board for the EIR scoping session design review, but they’re calling this thing “Neptune Beach” which I’m sure will annoy some people with great fondness for the old real Neptune Beach.   Here’s the number you are looking for: 48.   Thats how many units are slated to be built, 15% of those would be available for low income housing.   It appears that Tim Lewis Communities, the developer, will not be seeking a density bonus on this sucker.

But, to the graphics…

Site plan, aka how the units will look on the parcel:

Alameda in chains

So with little fanfare but is definitely a BIG DEAL, the first conveyance of Alameda Point happened last Tuesday and the City Council was positively giddy with the excitement of the whole thing.   It’s hard to get too excited since it’s just a bunch of pieces of paper right now, but the forward progress on the Alameda Point Vision document — I’ll write about that next week — will probably go a long way toward building more excitement for the Alameda Point project.

In more tangible news, Mayor Marie Gilmore announced on Tuesday night that a bunch of businesses have signed letters of intent for Alameda Landing.   The City later put out a press release about this but the businesses are:  the Corner Bakery, Michael’s Arts and Crafts, Habit Burger Grill, and Sleep Train.

Yes, more burgers people.   Apparently Alameda has an insatiable need for burgers that burger company after burger company is looking to fill.

Bring it on home

All right, I meant to write about this earlier, but the week got away from me.   Tonight the Planning Board will have the Design Review for the Alameda Landing residential on the agenda.   Which means that there should be some serious nit picking (in a good way) from the PB, but of course there should be a few “I hate it all!” type comments as well.  Personally, there are no major revelations, no “Oh my god, that is amazeballs” it’s all pretty non offensive and should appeal to average family that typically shops for new construction, eg. not people who tend to buy old homes because they love that sort of type of thing.   No, it will be families like mine with people who have no fix-it skills whatsoever and look at old houses not as a project to be loved and nurtured, but instead as a potential pain in the ass.

But enough about that, here are the renderings, first up, the multi-family buildings.   Before you freak out about these and worry that these will pop up everywhere, in this and this this document it details where each type (and each style) will appear in the community.

Kitchen sink

Apparently Bill Phua the developer of the old Cavenaugh Motors site is trying the old kitchen sink approach to leasing his development because honestly it’s not clear if he actually has any businesses interested but he is certainly trying hard to set himself up for something, anything.

At tonight’s Planning Board meeting he’s going to ask for approval of a “Wellness Center” for the front space of his building.  Still, unclear if there is a business in mind or if this is all hypothetical at this point.    The Wellness Center would be for

…physical therapy, exercise and other personal services related to wellness and health along with some wellness product retail

At the corner of Park and Tilden

So, remember how CVS was supposed to go into the space where the old Goode Chevy used to be and relocate from its old location behind the parking garage? Well it appears that CVS is no longer in the running for that prime Park Street space and Walgreens is going in instead, which means that CVS will probably go out of business, I’ll give it six months from the Walgreens opening date.

According to City Staff at Monday night’s Planning Board meeting CVS is out, Walgreens is in. It was unclear if it was CVS that backed out or if there were some contract terms that could not be negotiated. Suffice it to say, Walgreens is a much better operation than CVS so it appears as though the owners are scoring big time with Walgreens going in as opposed to CVS.

Rail against the machine

Tonight the Historic Advisory Board and the Planning Board will be having a joint meeting to talk about the Historic Preservation Ordinance.   So this will either be unfailingly polite — because, let’s face it, no one on the HAB is that aggressive — or it will be a awesome passive aggressive disaster.

That’s not necessarily the most interesting part of the meeting tonight.   What is most interesting is a letter from CalTrans about some improvements that they are going to make.   Most excitingly: new railings!

South Shore up

Tonight in super ho hum Planning Board meeting agendas, but it does mean that the Planning Board will get out of there early, the PB will be considering a proposal by the owners of South Shore to create a sort of internal design review process that will help streamline the process of bringing new stores into the shopping center.     The idea is that South Shore would get general approval from the Planning Board based on a set of design guidelines that are up for approval.

Essentially the point of all this is so that the interior spaces can have distinct facades instead of just blending into the overall South Shore architecture.   The example used at the Economic Development Commission where this plan was presented was that of See’s Candies — can you picture it in your mind’s eye? — with the white tiled facade.   It’s a unique and distinctive store front but it doesn’t take away from the overall design of the shopping center.

If you look at the design guideline manual, you’ll see some pretty nice storefronts.   If my memory serves since I haven’t been in a long time, it looks like some of those store fronts are from Santana Row in San Jose.   Anyway, they also want to put up some interior sales kiosks, like you see in other malls.

You can’t do that

Just in case you aren’t interesting in wading through the Alameda Point EIR documents, I pulled out a few charts to help you understand what the zoning designations actually means when it comes to specific uses.

Here’s the zoning map again: