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A surprise agenda item during the March 27 Los Altos city Council meeting was a retrospective “report” by Doug Schmitz, our retiring City Manager. It fittingly allowed Schmitz to have the last word on recent Los Altos downtown development matters. He also outlined a future timetable for private projects downtown.
In fine presenter fashion he started with a joke. “I came here as an Oregon duck. Sometimes I was a roasted duck. And now I’m leaving as a lame duck.” The crowd chuckled.
New Signals and Streetlights Downtown Los Altos
But the serious purpose of his talk was to give a status update on both private and public development projects in downtown Los Altos. He began with some history. Four years ago end of March, city council created the initiative to “Make First Street a Great Street.” Schmitz remarked that lots of passion and pain were required to achieve this greatness. He noted that there had been public comments and criticism about costs and impacts of city efforts. He reflected on just how bad First Street used to look, and showed photos to prove it.
He delved into the costs, saying it was absolutely right that the city “had to raid several different pots of money to do these projects.” The accounting requires it. As shown in the CIP (capital improvement project) documents on the city web site, about $10.6 million has been spent by the city on downtown improvements, about “30% of it other people’s money.” [Much of this was PG&E money for utility under-grounding.] He listed some itemized costs for “streetscaping” which seemed to come to about $5 million [of the $10.6 million]. He recalled the rigors of the long public process to come up with the streetscape plans — 15 public meetings, charettes, workshops, study sessions and much more.
Bulb-Out Downtown by Boulanger
Schmitz said that all the city public projects downtown came in at or somewhat below budget. He said that there were in fact significant delays in the construction schedule but these were due to unforeseen circumstances. The city and staff should not bear blame. He detailed these:
Downtown Los Altos bulb out at Main and First
- Demolition is planned this summer on two sites on First Street, with Safeway to be demolished most likely in in January 2013.
- The Lamb project at 100 First is scheduled for summer demolition, excavation in August, and concrete forming in August
- Mr. Morris with his gateway 1 First street project just completed a meeting with Mr. Schmitz and City Planner David Kornfield and is expected to resubmit plans by the end of March. They could reach Council for final approval in July.
- Construction framing is underway at 240 3rd Street
- EDITORIAL COMMENT: Schmitz showed a rendering of the Enchanté Hotel at 1 Main, but there was no financing or scheduling news at all. There was no mention of the Sorensen 40 Main St. project — the planning commission had made several change requests a couple months ago.
The 13 minute video clip is included above. It’s the full talk – the only editing was to add some text overlay.
EDITORIAL COMMENT: Bye-bye Duckie Doug! Fare thee well in thy retirement.
[…] 6) A surprise agenda insertion – Doug Schmitz gave a 13 minute report on the public and private developments downtown over the past 4 years. “Downtown is coming back.” “Expect downtown to be torn up for two more years.” See the full report here. […]