Council wants to revisit plan for downtown Glendale

The Glendale City Council wants to look into scaling back incentives and establishing additional fees for developers, direction given Tuesday after a presentation indicated that 66% of new multifamily units approved in Glendale since 2006 have been in the downtown area.

The report chronicling the progress of the Downtown Specific Plan noted 3,188 new multifamily units have been built or have been in some stage of development since the plan was adopted by the council eight years ago.

Twenty residential and mixed-use projects in the pipeline are included in that figure.

The Downtown Specific Plan was drafted with the goal of being a vision for growth in the neighborhood over roughly the course of two decades.

But Councilman Ara Najarian, a member of the council who approved the plan in August 2006, said new developments sprung up too fast and expressed concerns about increased congestion.

“We’re going to have a city that’s going to be completely gridlocked, completely alien to what any of us thought what Glendale would be like,” he said.

Najarian spoke out against granting developers height and setback exceptions in exchange for incentives such as providing open space.

He said open space should become a requirement for developers and asked staff to prepare a proposal revising incentive policies.

The council also discussed requiring developers to get platinum LEED certification — the highest level given to an environmentally responsible development — to receive certain incentives, which could include easing of parking or setback requirements. The current level needed to receive the incentive is silver.

Najarian also suggested enacting a moratorium for new developments, direction that won support from Councilwoman Paula Devine.

The item would likely be brought back for a vote on Nov. 4, City Manager Scott Ochoa said in a phone interview.

Najarian’s colleagues on the council agreed with the need to revisit some provisions of the plan as well as implement some new fees.

Developers currently are required to pay impact fees that cover park improvements. Councilwoman Laura Friedman said she’d like to see a transportation impact fee put in place.

An analysis is needed to see where people are going in downtown and how they’re getting there, she said, then look into how local public transportation can be used to mitigate that growth impact.

“The way not to have gridlock is to have a really robust transportation system,” Friedman said.

Mayor Zareh Sinanyan said he would like to see if implementing a fee to pay for low-income housing would be feasible, which he said would provide Glendale with its own funding source in addition to already-existing federal help.

Despite concerns raised by his colleagues about traffic and gridlock, the mayor said he is less worried.

“I work in downtown, I walk those streets almost every day and I haven’t seen anything extraordinary, I haven’t seen Glendale really drastically change in the worst possible direction as far as traffic impact or pedestrian impact or any kind of impact is concerned,” Sinanyan said.

Tuesday’s presentation also included a look at the city’s mobility study, which looks to accommodate growth on the roads of Glendale.

One of the proposed mitigation measures involved converting certain streets into one-way streets.

Devine suggested making the streets parallel to the Ventura (134) Freeway one-way to reduce congestion. She also suggested city staff look into synchronizing traffic lights.

Ochoa said all of the recommendations will eventually be brought back in the form of action items at a later date with the issue of developer incentives likely to be considered early next year.