11/2/2011

Post date: Mar 23, 2013 9:23:21 PM

River Oaks Neighborhood Association Board Meeting

Wednesday November 2, 2011

7:00pm @ Premier Pizza, River Oaks

Present: Jean, Mike, Laura, Laura Rasay (resident), Sheila Ngo (District 4)

Agenda items:

• Sheila is putting together a meeting with Essex to address RONA's concerns. Monday, Nov 21st, 7pm, at Novellus' Auditorium. We will flyer mailboxes to help get the word out.

• Mike met with Tom Armstrong of HMH Engineering regarding 401/405 ROP.

  • This is the lot to the west of Parkside. Irvine has bought the property. This is the location rumored to be "affordable" units. Tom says it's "not all affordable".

  • HMH does design work for Irvine. They're reaching out to Parkside residents to improve their design. Mike is going to organize a committee of Parkside residents who live along the border to discuss with HMH. For more information, contact bertram@ro-na.org. The board pre-approves use of RONA funds to provide a meeting space and snacks for about 24 people.

  • Current preliminary design: 438 units on the 8.1 acre site, 4 stories of residential over 2 stories of parking, one of the parking stories is underground. The streetscape largely remains the same as it is now,: the large redwoods, current driveways, and the greenery patch next to Parkside&ROP corner are all kept.

  • They will obey the 45-degree-angle setback requirement from the NSJ Urban Design guidelines.

  • However, in the NSJ policy, there aren't 438 unallocated housing units. So they have to wait for someone to release some. (They think the BRE site at the ROP&Zanker corner is going to release theirs, since they didn't start in time for the affordable-housing waiver.) If they do get allocation, construction will start once the Crescent/Sony project is finished. So they're looking at plans finalized May 2012 and construction start December 2012.

  • Mike has copies of the current preliminary plan. RONA board looked them over, they look somewhat reasonable at first glance. It looks like the Urban Design guidelines are helping. There were some ideas on how to further reduce height on Parkside border, as well as how to interface to riparian corridor. Mike mentioned they believe street disruption for construction should be less than at Crescent site.

  • Also some talk about the levee access regarding 401/405 ROP. Sheila mentioned that the water district is reluctant to modify levees. RONA's opinion is that if NSJ policy is to have a walkable neighborhood, the levee trails are a huge part of that. City needs to encourage access not ignore it. HMH says they need to have emergency vehicle access along riparian side of property, however they want to make it walkable and nice.

• Some other news gleaned from talking to Tom:

  • The east corner of Cisco Way and ROP has a long-term commercial lease. They probably won't be selling for a while.

  • The deal that Cisco was trying to make to trade residential zoning along Baypointe Parkway for their commercial zoning along Cisco Way fell through.

  • The city is sitting on $77 million in parks money. It's using the interest from this money for the General Fund. There should be plenty of money to build the Essex park!

• Mike also had some updates about Essex:

  • New name, "Epic Residential"?

  • There is a 2.6 acre park. It's a triangle along the riparian corridor. We asked Sheila to follow up on the parks plan for this, since no-one got back to us after the NSJ Taskforce Meeting in September.

  • It will be 3 buildings. The first 2 are in Phase 1 and are shorter, woodframe; these are the buildings closer to ROP and are being constructed now. The last one is a steel-frame high-rise (aka more than 6 stories), and they're putting it in Phase 2 because steel prices are too high right now to build.

  • Why can't we work out a park-maintenance deal for Essex like we did for Irvine? Well apparently the PDO funds their development paid is not enough to both build the park and maintain it.

• Sheila announces that District 4 is doing a Donation Drive to collect clothing, household goods, e-waste, etc to assist the needy. Flyer here.

• Next RONA meeting 12/7 normal time & place.