Planning Commission To Get One More Look at Kensington

Posted 6/8/12 – The Planning Commission agreed last night to hold a special meeting on Monday, June 11th to consider the Kensington Assisted Living Facility project.  Developer Fountain Square Development West had expressed concerns that failure to move the project forward would not allow the City Council to adequately review the project and determine the verbiage in time to have  a ballot measure submitted to the County Clerk for the November election.  FSDW had indicated that they might want the Commission to vote yes or no at last night’s meeting

However, several commissioners were concerned that they had not had time to adequately review changes to the Specific Plan that had been submitted just hours before the meeting.  The Specific Plan is one of four items the Commission was considering, along with a Conditional Use Permit to construct and operate an assisted living facility, a Municipal Code Text amendment to establish an Overlay Zone for the property, and the Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration to evaluate the proposed project’s effects on the environment.

The Developer had agreed to strike out several parts of the Specific Plan that Development Services Director Danny Castro had stated were of concern to City Staff, probably the most troubling of which (for staff and the Commissioners)  was a formula for defining a dwelling unit that would have considered each bed in the facility to be .25 of a dwelling unit, which would have put the project in compliance with Measure V.  Commissioner Vandevelde stated that this was the kind of measuring stick that he wanted to see, but wasn’t sure that the ratio was what it should be, and that it needed more study.  Other Commissioners also saw it as a concern, and the developer decided to pull it off the table.

Despite the concessions by the Developer, several Commissioners stated that they needed more time to review the Specific Plan, and in an effort to provide that time without requiring a vote at this meeting, the Commission agreed to meet in special session on Monday.