The Marina Playa project is located on the southeast corner of El Camino Real and Lawrence Expressway, off the Lawrence Expressway exit to El Camino Real. The project is located on about 7.36 acres, on the old Kaiser office lot (with all the Graffiti on them). There are two developers: BRE Properties and Taylor Morrison of California (TM). BRE is proposing 277 retail apartments off of Granada Ave. on 3.2 acres of land and TM is proposing 63 residential units on 4.16 acres of land just to the north of the apartments with access off the El Camino Real off-ramp. This project was introduced in 2006 and has been kept relatively secret by Santa Clara’s 300-foot notification practices. Worse yet, Yen Han Chen, the project planner for the City, made no mention of the project in our many talks with him. The Final EIR was released in April of 2008 and the project was approved by the City Planning Commission on April 23, 2008. It is currently scheduled for presentation to the City Council on Tuesday, May 13, 2008.

The 277 BRE apartments will be a six-story block complex with 1.5 stories of parking underground, encompassing almost the entire 3.2 acres. The four-and-a-half stories above ground will contain 277 apartments, mostly single-bedroom units; that is 86.6 units per acre. The completed project will stand 55 feet above ground (5 feet above the city’s 50-foot ordinance). There will be a total of 502 parking spaces, 432 for residents and 70 for guests.

The 63 TM residences will consist of 57 single-family units and one Townhouse complex with 6 units. The single-family units will be three-stories high with two-car garages. The Townhouses will also be three-stories high with two-car tandem garages (two cars front-to-back, not normally allowed in Santa Clara). None of the units will have driveways capable of parking a car, so guests will have to use the 18 parking stalls.

Major Problems

Santa Clara itself

Santa Clara is allowing projects without performing their due-diligence. The current projects in the area have used the same erroneous studies that are over 5 years old, or neglected to perform studies at all. The traffic analyses in the EIRs were limited in scope and did not contain any intersection, roadway, or freeway analysis. Instead, they used traffic studies over 7 years old and provided no additional data to identify how traffic has changed in the last 8 years. The northbound ramps at this intersection are the eighth most accident-prone along the El Camino Real, yet Santa Clara doesn’t want to do an impact study for all of this added traffic. Santa Clara plans to build these developments contrary to rules adopted by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), The Grand Boulevard Initiative (for developing El Camino), and the City of Santa Clara’s own guidelines, as identified in the City’s current General Plan.

Density

The City of Santa Clara plans to add up to 2,680 housing units within 1/2 mile of Lawrence and El Camino Real by the year 2010. Over 30% of all new housing in Santa Clara is planned here. 13% of all space (nearly 65 acres) within this 502-acre area will be high density, and up to 105 feet (9 stories) tall. The Marina Playa project proposes 340 units on 7.36 acres of land, or 46.2 units per acre, which exceeds the property’s “Transit-Oriented Mixed Use” designation allowing 26 to 45 units per acre.

Traffic

According to the California Highway Patrol (CHP) response to the EIR, the complex will cause a 42% increase in traffic at the site. Because the two access points into the complex feed onto Lawrence Expressway at or near the off-ramp to El Camino Real, CHP expects the likelihood of traffic collisions to “be greatly increased”; the accident rate at this intersection is already double the statewide norm. They believe that this may also cause delays in emergency responses and necessitate additional resources and officers to provide traffic enforcement. Traveling southbound on Lawrence, all residents of Marina Playa will have to go all the way down to Benton and make a U-turn to go home, or take a left onto El Camino Real and go completely around the complex.

Transit

The project site has “Transit-Oriented Mixed Use” designation, however there was no reference to the adequacy of existing transit service. They neglect to study capacity and frequency of service or mention the fact that although Santa Clara would like to have a high-capacity municipal transit corridor in the area, none currently exists. All of the high-speed, higher-capacity transit goes around the area, not through it. In the areas where higher-density, transit-oriented designations make sense (within 1/2 mile of Santa Clara’s train station, which is served by 325 transit trips each way each weekday, with future plans to add BART), less than 1% higher-density housing is planned.

Noise

The Marina Playa project would expose future residents to noise levels in excess of acceptable City standards that, even with mitigation measures, would still be listed as Significant Unavoidable Impact. An expert states that the noise level from Lawrence Expressway will be around 75-dba, which is 20-dba above allowable limits. Balconies with a direct line of sight or side view of Lawrence Expressway or units that are within 300 feet of Lawrence Expressway’s centerline would have to have solid railings 42-inches high, which brings into question why the balconies would be built at all since anyone on the balconies or with open access ways would be subject to the excessive noise levels. Sound walls will not be built the entire 3 to 4 stories up. [Update: It’s actually worse than what I wrote. The Final EIR wording states that there will be NO mitigation measures for the units described above and that residents will have to live with “significant unavoidable long-term noise exposure impact”.]