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Menlo Park-based builder Acclaim Companies has revised its proposal for a housing complex at 762 San Antonio Road, a 197-apartment development that will go up in an area next to the Mountain View border where Palo Alto is trying to encourage housing growth.
The proposal for this site in south Palo Alto is up for review by that city’s Architectural Review Board on Aug. 7.
The new proposal has a larger facade, fewer affordable housing units and a roof deck, but will remain seven stories tall, with the five upper stories serving as housing and the lower two as amenities and a garage with 252 parking stalls.
The building is proposed under California’s builder’s remedy provision, which applies to cities which have not adopted a compliant housing plan. Palo Alto submitted its Housing Element after the state deadline and the Department of Housing and Community Development approved it in August 2024. Acclaim Companies first proposed the project before the state approval.
The provision – as written before August 2024 – essentially allows builders to bypass a city’s zoning rules when proposing housing, which the city must approve provided that the new housing allocates at least 20% of the units to lower-income residents, which are residents making up to 80% of the area’s median income.
Acclaim Companies’ original proposal complied with those requirements, and bypassed some of Palo Alto’s zoning requirements. For example, Palo Alto has a 50-foot building height limit, and the proposed building will be 79 feet tall.
However, since Acclaim Companies’ original proposal (and after Palo Alto’s housing plan was approved), builder’s remedy was amended in the state Senate. Assembly Bill 1893, which was authored by state Assembly member Buffy Wicks, lowers the percentage of units that must be designated as affordable housing. For units in the “lower income” category, which applies to households that make up to 80% of the area median income, the required percentage of units is 13%, dropped from 20%. Acclaim Companies’ new proposal reflects this amendment, dropping the proposed lower-income units to 26 units, or 13%.
This percentage of lower-income units is comparatively low when compared to the other Acclaim Companies project in Palo Alto: The city recently approved the company’s plan to build a seven-story apartment complex with 368 units at 3150 El Camino Real, the former site of The Fish Market. That project, which Acclaim plans to start constructing later this year, allocates 20% of its units to lower-income residents.
The San Antonio building is located in an area where Palo Alto is hoping to increase housing, and would be one of the largest projects in the new area, which has already seen numerous major residential proposals. These include two recent proposals for nearby sites at 788 San Antonio Road and 800 San Antonio Road, which would feature 168 and 120 apartments, respectively.
In its revised application for 762 San Antonio, Acclaim described the style of the development as utilizing “warm, rich colors and materials” to “express a contemporary yet timeless aesthetic.” The new design also aims to create a “distinctive base, middle and top,” with a ground floor that includes amenities such as a leasing office, a lobby and a co-working space, according to the application.
“Residential accentuation was achieved through a combination of storefront transparency and enhanced materials at the ground level, creating a more human-scale design,” the plans state.
Does Assembly Bill 1893 apply retroactively (i.e. on applications already submitted or even approved)? imo that seems to be a wrong way to legislate.