Inability to get out of your own way (Part 3)
Continued from Part 2
HOW long??
Although we worked on the design for two years to gain approval from the DRB, we were always viewed as the "rookies" on the design team. The landscape architect had been with the project for years before us. And we learned that there was a local community group that had been pushing for this project for twenty years. Twenty?! I thought I had misheard the number, but she went on about how when she started the project, her kids were still in grade school and now they've gone off on their careers.
Twenty years. I was still in high school then, hoping to get accepted into a good school to study architecture. Bill Clinton was the president. Tech stocks were booming as people began to discover the internet as AOL, the largest ISP, served via 56k baud modems, downloading one mp3 song in 20 minutes. No cell phones had cameras yet. I've since graduated college, earning a Bachelor of Architecture and practiced in the field for over a decade. We've gone through George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump had been elected. Tech stocks had crashed, rebounded, and housing crashed and rebounded within that timeframe. Kids now don't even know what AOL or a dial-up modem is and we stream music and even HD video real time. Cell phones not only have cameras, many have three cameras, they have GPS, proximity sensors, NFC chips, Bluetooth, WiFi, compass, accelerometer, and biometric security.
How could all of this happen in that span of time, when people can't even get one housing project built? To be fair, it wasn't just the housing aspect; a lot of work was with the National Historic Register, and applications for grants for the park, but still! When it all started, someone talking to their watch would have been considered either crazy or called Dick Tracy. When it finally finished, someone talking to their watch just meant they bought a smart watch.
We REALLY want this to happen
These were the words relayed to us when we came aboard. The city really wants this housing project to happen. The city needs the funds from the fees attached to the housing project to secure funding for the nearby senior housing and for the park infrastructure as well. This would essentially be as rubber stamp as you can get in the Bay Area.
"Great!" we thought. It would be a refreshing change of pace. We were projecting that within a few months, the design would be done and submitted, ready to move into construction documents.
A year and a half later, we had been rejected twice, and a months-long wait for city paperwork ensued. Finally we were back on the project, with a few new members on the Design Review Board, and still the process took a few months and three tries to get them to approve the design.
Through this ordeal, the local community group grumbled about the process. The second time we were at DRB, they required yet more changes and the group let out a collective exasperated sigh. In talking briefly with them, it turns out the DRB rarely, if ever, attends their community meetings while our client attended nearly every one. So who is actually acting in the community's best interests, here?
Our client spoke to the mayor after this. When asking the mayor why the DRB was being such hemorrhoids, the mayor exclaimed that he has had the same complaint from several other developers recently and that he would talk to the DRB.
In the final DRB meeting, we knew the DRB would not be able to reject us a final time. There had been some talks behind closed doors (I was not inside these doors) and legally, they could not vote no on the project. They still hemmed and hawed. The client had to text the city attorney, present at the meeting, to get her to rein in the DRB members. At the end, they attached some conditions of approval to the project and with some hesitation, voted to approve the project.
The final insult
So the design was approved and we could move on to construction documents, right? Nope. There was still planning commission and city council to get through. Had this been a normal project, this may have gone through two more contentious jurisdictions. But the stage had already been set for rubber stamps.
Fortunately, I was spared from having to go to the planning commission. But I had to attend the city council meeting.
An hour before the city council hearing, the staff planner called our client and informed him that he would have to prepare a presentation. Seriously? It's supposed to be a non-contentious item. And a one hour notice to prepare a presentation when the planner must have known about it for at least a month is just idiotic. But what was he going to do? So he sat in his car preparing a PDF presentation on his laptop.
He walked in to the meeting about half an hour after it started, while the council voted to push the non-contentious items to the end of the meeting, for reasons unclear to everybody. They proceeded to talk about the homeless issue in the city. Rabble-rousers yelled out of turn, comparing the mayor to Trump and people flipping him off when he threatened to kick people out who were speaking out of turn. People yelled for funding and programs after being told by a research team the specific programs yielded little results. Someone spoke out about how homeless were only so because they were lazy. A resident I had met told me that the Filipino government would sometimes air the city's council meetings to their citizens as an example of how democracy doesn't work.
Four hours later, the spectacle finally ended. They voted to approve twenty five thousand dollars of spending on a study (which will not likely yield different results than the first study) and moved on to the budget, which, from what I read, doesn't seem like there was twenty five thousand dollars to spare.
At the end of that, council pondered if they should just continue the non-contentious items, which we were a part of, to the next meeting, since it was already getting close to midnight.
"What is going on?" we asked ourselves.
After a little debate, they voted to extend time and move on to our project. Our project was introduced, a motion was made, seconded, and voted to be approved unanimously within five minutes.
They couldn't do this at the beginning of the meeting? Instead, they made our client pay for five hours plus travel, of my time, the civil engineer's time, the landscape architect's time, and his assistants' time, to sit around and do nothing.
How does anything ever get done at the governmental level, if this is considered expedited? But finally, the city should be getting almost 200 units of affordable market rate housing. As long as building permits don't follow a similar path.
HOW long??
Although we worked on the design for two years to gain approval from the DRB, we were always viewed as the "rookies" on the design team. The landscape architect had been with the project for years before us. And we learned that there was a local community group that had been pushing for this project for twenty years. Twenty?! I thought I had misheard the number, but she went on about how when she started the project, her kids were still in grade school and now they've gone off on their careers.
Twenty years. I was still in high school then, hoping to get accepted into a good school to study architecture. Bill Clinton was the president. Tech stocks were booming as people began to discover the internet as AOL, the largest ISP, served via 56k baud modems, downloading one mp3 song in 20 minutes. No cell phones had cameras yet. I've since graduated college, earning a Bachelor of Architecture and practiced in the field for over a decade. We've gone through George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump had been elected. Tech stocks had crashed, rebounded, and housing crashed and rebounded within that timeframe. Kids now don't even know what AOL or a dial-up modem is and we stream music and even HD video real time. Cell phones not only have cameras, many have three cameras, they have GPS, proximity sensors, NFC chips, Bluetooth, WiFi, compass, accelerometer, and biometric security.
How could all of this happen in that span of time, when people can't even get one housing project built? To be fair, it wasn't just the housing aspect; a lot of work was with the National Historic Register, and applications for grants for the park, but still! When it all started, someone talking to their watch would have been considered either crazy or called Dick Tracy. When it finally finished, someone talking to their watch just meant they bought a smart watch.
We REALLY want this to happen
These were the words relayed to us when we came aboard. The city really wants this housing project to happen. The city needs the funds from the fees attached to the housing project to secure funding for the nearby senior housing and for the park infrastructure as well. This would essentially be as rubber stamp as you can get in the Bay Area.
"Great!" we thought. It would be a refreshing change of pace. We were projecting that within a few months, the design would be done and submitted, ready to move into construction documents.
A year and a half later, we had been rejected twice, and a months-long wait for city paperwork ensued. Finally we were back on the project, with a few new members on the Design Review Board, and still the process took a few months and three tries to get them to approve the design.
Through this ordeal, the local community group grumbled about the process. The second time we were at DRB, they required yet more changes and the group let out a collective exasperated sigh. In talking briefly with them, it turns out the DRB rarely, if ever, attends their community meetings while our client attended nearly every one. So who is actually acting in the community's best interests, here?
Our client spoke to the mayor after this. When asking the mayor why the DRB was being such hemorrhoids, the mayor exclaimed that he has had the same complaint from several other developers recently and that he would talk to the DRB.
In the final DRB meeting, we knew the DRB would not be able to reject us a final time. There had been some talks behind closed doors (I was not inside these doors) and legally, they could not vote no on the project. They still hemmed and hawed. The client had to text the city attorney, present at the meeting, to get her to rein in the DRB members. At the end, they attached some conditions of approval to the project and with some hesitation, voted to approve the project.
The final insult
So the design was approved and we could move on to construction documents, right? Nope. There was still planning commission and city council to get through. Had this been a normal project, this may have gone through two more contentious jurisdictions. But the stage had already been set for rubber stamps.
Fortunately, I was spared from having to go to the planning commission. But I had to attend the city council meeting.
An hour before the city council hearing, the staff planner called our client and informed him that he would have to prepare a presentation. Seriously? It's supposed to be a non-contentious item. And a one hour notice to prepare a presentation when the planner must have known about it for at least a month is just idiotic. But what was he going to do? So he sat in his car preparing a PDF presentation on his laptop.
He walked in to the meeting about half an hour after it started, while the council voted to push the non-contentious items to the end of the meeting, for reasons unclear to everybody. They proceeded to talk about the homeless issue in the city. Rabble-rousers yelled out of turn, comparing the mayor to Trump and people flipping him off when he threatened to kick people out who were speaking out of turn. People yelled for funding and programs after being told by a research team the specific programs yielded little results. Someone spoke out about how homeless were only so because they were lazy. A resident I had met told me that the Filipino government would sometimes air the city's council meetings to their citizens as an example of how democracy doesn't work.
Four hours later, the spectacle finally ended. They voted to approve twenty five thousand dollars of spending on a study (which will not likely yield different results than the first study) and moved on to the budget, which, from what I read, doesn't seem like there was twenty five thousand dollars to spare.
At the end of that, council pondered if they should just continue the non-contentious items, which we were a part of, to the next meeting, since it was already getting close to midnight.
"What is going on?" we asked ourselves.
After a little debate, they voted to extend time and move on to our project. Our project was introduced, a motion was made, seconded, and voted to be approved unanimously within five minutes.
They couldn't do this at the beginning of the meeting? Instead, they made our client pay for five hours plus travel, of my time, the civil engineer's time, the landscape architect's time, and his assistants' time, to sit around and do nothing.
How does anything ever get done at the governmental level, if this is considered expedited? But finally, the city should be getting almost 200 units of affordable market rate housing. As long as building permits don't follow a similar path.
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