Council Member Won questions on community engagement and affordability

Thank you so much for your presentation.

Throughout the public review process, residents of the surrounding area of this project have expressed deep concerns related to affordability, community benefits, street-level design, and greenery and building size.

What have you done to engage the members of the surrounding neighborhood, and how will you incorporate the community priorities into the project?

Yeah, so thank you, Councilmember Wan.

And, you know, we've had some very productive conversations with some of our surrounding neighbors.

And, you know, one of the things that they mentioned was that they're not opposed to new development.

I think an important distinction here between the R7X to the east of us and us is that we're providing mandatory inclusionary housing.

So, of course, since 2016, this is a requirement.

We're happy to do it.

And really what it is is it allows us to cross-subsidize through no city subsidy to allow for the creation of these affordable units.

In our case, an average unit size for these affordable units of over two bedrooms, so two to three bedrooms.

So there were things I think that we can do and things that I think have been a challenge for us.

The things that we can do, and Nick, who's an experienced applicant in terms of an architect and has built buildings across the city, we've talked a lot about architectural aspects of the building.

what we can do to try to mitigate some of the height effects, and the opportunity to create some greenery around the space.

I know that there's a pedestrian triangle to the front of the building.

We've talked to the area about perhaps donating or trying to contribute to allowing for more greenery in that space as well.

Ms.

Leong, who is one of the attendees of the conversation we had with community members, discussed an opportunity to commit to certain land use trusts in the area.

And Ashley has said that she'd be more than willing to do that.

Ashley has, since the beginning, has told me in no uncertain terms that she'd like to try to give as much as possible, particularly in terms of art space and the opportunity for artists,

given the nature of the surrounding area, as well as the opportunity to greenify the area and provide some assistance to parklands in the area.

I know that Murray Playground is a heavily utilized playground in the area.

And while city planning noted that as being a positive of rezoning here, the truth is that playgrounds need resources and they can benefit from local contributions.

So with that in mind, we're thrilled to be able to do that.

I think that in terms of the building itself, we did make changes, as we discussed, to the parking as well as to the curb cuts.

The massing of the building, I think, has been a little bit more of a challenge.

I know that Nick did some research into the adjacent building.

It is somewhat at an angle to the building, so it's not immediately abutting.

And the opportunity we had to mass some of the bulk away from the sides.

has basically put us to the 11-story height of the building.

So, Nick, I don't know if you just want to address that briefly.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, we could reduce the height of the building.

We could reduce the height of the building by going much, I think, much, much deeper to the backyard because right now you can go and have up to a height of 75 feet, about 20 feet for the backyard.

So we can basically fatten up the building, and we could go back to the sides and go back to 10 floors.

But it just seems like the more sensitive thing to do would just be to be nice to these neighbors because, I mean, ultimately these are the people that are the ones who are actually opposing it.

It's people that are in this condo and also the people that are on the backside of the block that don't want to have to deal with a construction site.

So, you know, trying to be mindful of them, we think that this is a good solution.

And it's also better urbanistically, too, we think, just because it's a much better backdrop for the plaza.

So all things considered, you know, this seems to be like a really reasonable compromise.

And it's, you know, well within the character of all this other surrounding fabric in this one spot, you know.