What to Expect at Tuesday Night's City Council Meeting: Blach School & Safeway Parking Plans, Lincoln Park Hearing and More!

Got a few hours—or considerably more? Set aside the time Tuesday night.

Parking, both at the downtown Safeway downtown and at a problematic location behind Blach Jr. High School, will come before the Los Altos City Council Tuesday.

The council's agenda already full of other issues, from a public hearing on rezoning Lincoln Park, to how homeowners are allowed to pave and landscape road shoulders in front of their homes, to what color and what kind of play structures to put into the new Rosita Park. Staff also recommends upholding a denial of a tree removal permit at 1043 Los Altos Ave.

That's not counting the 6 p.m. study session, where the council is expected to wrangle on its policies on several important issues involving parks. They include: the scope and limits on dog parks, skateboard parks, restrooms, access to Redwood Grove, and parking time limits at Shoup and McKenzie parks.

During the council meeting that begins at 7 p.m., however, Safeway and the Carmel Terrace neighborhood take center stage.

Members may take action that would in effect lower the parking requirement at a Safeway renovation, which city staff is recommending. Safeway has proposed providing parking for fewer cars than is required at its standalone lot for a 45,265-square-foot building. This is because it has also proposed joining the downtown parking district, which has a lower parking space requirement. According to city planning staff, Safeway's current proposal is to build 154 parking spaces on its current site, and make that parking available to shoppers with other business in the area. The store is directly across one of the city's shopping plazas, where the required ratio is 2.7 spaces for every 1,000 square feet of space. Standalone parking lots require 5 spaces per 1,000 square feet.

The council is asked by the planning staff to approve "a non-binding Parking Term Sheet" if it agrees, so that Safeway could continue planning along this pathway.

Earlier this year, downtown business advocates had strongly urged the city consider underground parking to open up additional spaces, believing that parking will be inadequate in a revitalized downtown.

More spirited parking discussions are expected Tuesday night over the parking and stopping ban in the Carmel Terrace neighborhood. The streets surrounding the rear entrance of Blach Intermediate School have had a temporary, "No Stopping/No Parking," resident-only parking restriction since the City Council approve a one-year pilot project in November 2009.

That timeframe came and went, but in the meantime a huge and heated meeting over traffic in the neighborhood took place in January 2011 that resulted in the parking restrictions being extended until council-approved capital improvements were made to the streets. Those improvements to Carmel Terrace, which include a "bike boulevard," were approved in June, but are not scheduled to be made until the 2015-16 fiscal year.

Residents unhappy with the parking restrictions, however, have come before the council during public comment period at recent City Council meetings. Council is scheduled to review the chronology of events on Tuesday night.

Stay tuned to see what next will happen.