It's also a question of whether City Planning Commission Chairman
Barry Schultz was suffering from a post-lunch slump when he seemed to
forget that the reason for the hearing and the vote he was about to make
was that the Kensington Terrace project was in a Process 4 due to the
request for a height variance in the CN-1-3 zone. How he can say that
the project is consistent with the zoning, we'll never know:
“Let
me make a few comments. This has been, and is, as I continue to talk, a
difficult decision for me to make and I’ll tell you why, You know, I
spend a significant part of my time here in San Diego in the Mid-City
area, City Heights, I spend a lot of time in Kensington. I spend a lot
of time now in our urban neighborhoods and just recently spent time
traveling through North Park, Kensington, all of these things and really
taking a look and saying you, you know, there is the issue of
neighborhood character and what do you like and what makes these
neighborhoods different, and that’s what’s troubling to me because when
I look at Kensington and specifically this portion of Adams Avenue,
what I like about it is the small scale. It seems to be pedestrian
friendly. It seems to be small scale. It’s almost kind of a little
backyard if you will.
“And if I think about it from that standpoint this project
doesn’t fit.
It
just does not fit that sense that I have about that part of the
neighborhood. I tried to figure out, well, okay, I can’t just have a
feeling. I have got to try to articulate what it is that really bothers
me. At first it was three stories. And I think quite frankly it is three
stories. It’s the mass of the three stories begins to change that
character. Then I started to think about what are the impacts of that
and
the impact – I’m having a hard time believing that the project won’t
bring in a tremendous amount of traffic. That will change the character
of that community. It’s just will. … Having said that, I have to
respect the process here. I mean, this developer has done everything
right… I mean,
everything you have laid out there is the exactly
the right thing to do. Clearly you have done everything. You’ve stepped
back and done all these things.
“Now,
my heart tells me that it would be a great project on El Cajon Boulevard.
That’s
where we want to create our village. That’s where we want to have our
transit corridor, all of that thing. Everything that you’re doing would
be a perfect fit there.
“So, where do the scales tip for me? Well, the scale tips back to the big issue which is,
you’re
building a project consistent with the development regulations and the
zoning that apply to that corridor and the way the zoning is today
allows you to do what you want to do. And it allows everybody along
there to do exactly what you’re doing and why we did that, I don’t know.
It was done before my time.“The reality is, that’s the play book. And,
based on the FAR, based on the density, this is the kind of project that
that zoning encourages… I think I have to somewhat reluctantly support
the motion because I think all the work, all of the things that you have
done have been the right thing and the development regulations which
are supposed to implement our vision for neighborhoods, this is the
vision for it. This is what those regulations say.
That’s what the community plan says. At the end of the day, I think the scales tip in that favor.”
- Barry Schultz, Chairman, City of San Diego Planning Commission, November 15, 2007