Why Can’t Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground? | Kevin Burke

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KEVIN BURKE

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Walnut Creek's Design Review Commission is reviewing a new apartment building on Botelho Drive across from the Habit this evening. Like every project proposed in Walnut Creek recently, it cannot be built under the city's normal zoning code, so it is using state density bonus law to waive laws around heights and setbacks that make the project financially unworkable.

Like every other podium apartment proposed recently it feels like a giant missed opportunity. I hope the Design Review Commission - and the city - can spend a bit more time thinking about, and trying to remove, the constraints that make it hard to produce a building that families can live in.

As someone with two young kids it's always been notable, and odd, that Alma Park, up the hill, has no kids facilities - no swing, no playground, no basketball hoop. This would be a great chance to try to fix that. But the proposed building has no three or four bedroom units, and the interior courtyard is going to struggle to get sunlight. The lack of three+ bedroom units means that there are going to continue to be few product types available in Walnut Creek for families. It is hard for a lot of people to afford a $1.5m single family detached house but if that is the only living option available that offers three bedrooms then that will substantially constrain who can live here and hamper young couples ability to have children.

Most of the apartments have a window on just one side. The interior facing rooms on the lower floors are going to have a lot of trouble getting light in. With a window on only one side, you can't ventilate your apartment by opening windows on multiple sides. This increases the demand for HVAC, which increases the cost of living.

It's possible to do better - a lot better! In other countries, you very rarely<br>see this "double loaded corridor" design. Here's an apartment in Copenhagen,<br>Denmark that is actually denser (149 homes/acre) than this proposal, and the<br>same average height.

Look at this floor plan. Every apartment has windows on multiple sides and at least one balcony, sometimes two.

When you have windows on multiple sides it is a lot easier to offer units that<br>have lots of bedrooms. This project has tons of family sized apartments. And<br>when every room is multiple aspect you can do stuff like offer a 900 square foot<br>one bedroom unit.

The median household income here in Walnut Creek is $130,000 - more than double the median Copenhagen income - but there are zero 900 square foot one bedroom apartments here that have windows on multiple sides.

And when you don't need to dedicate as much interior space to circulation, you<br>can have a sunlight filled interior courtyard. With a playground. Look how<br>much light there is on this playground! This is a building my family could live<br>in.

I really hope the city can spend some time thinking about why we can't design<br>apartments in Walnut Creek with four bedrooms and sunlight and courtyards that<br>have playgrounds in them. Here are some of the constraints:

Minimum parking: The parking requirements shape the whole design of the<br>building but parking is about to radically change forever. In five years it will<br>be possible to buy a car that can drop you off and then go park itself in an<br>offsite garage. The onsite parking in this building has maybe a ten year useful<br>life, in a building with a seventy five year lifespan. If we as a city were<br>willing to be more aggressive about offstreet parking and encouraging other<br>options - we could get much more livable buildings with cheaper rent.

Some neighbors have complained about the building height, and this is also<br>an answer for them. If we could cut the amount of space dedicated to parking<br>we could cut a floor off the building.

Parking standards: All of the city's rules about aisle widths and stall<br>widths and lengths assume a human is parking every car. A robot is capable of<br>parking cars with an inch of clearance on both sides. A self driven car cannot<br>block anyone in. "Humans park their own cars" will be true for maybe five more<br>years and for the next seventy years of this building's designed life, the<br>sixteen foot wide drive aisles, and nine foot wide parking stalls will age like<br>sour milk.

Maybe this building in 2026 can't assume robots are parking the cars. But we<br>could change the city's rules now and maybe a building a year from now will<br>be able to dedicate less space to parking.

The global leader in self driving cars has a headquarters thirty miles from<br>here - the city could invite someone from Waymo to give a talk on the future<br>of onsite parking and how our codes should adapt.

Stairways:...