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The San Ramon Planning Commission on Tuesday is set to discuss a proposed mixed-use apartment and commercial complex and a potential Wendy’s drive-thru restaurant that would sit down the street from each other in northwestern San Ramon.
The fast-food chain restaurant would be located on vacant property at 2222 San Ramon Valley Blvd. while the San Ramon Valley Apartments mixed-use project would be added about a block away at 2251 and 2255 San Ramon Valley Blvd., a site that includes the Outpost Sports Bar and Grill and the Windmill Farms produce market.
The commission is set to lead off with the Wendy’s project, a public hearing on the proposed 3,278-square-foot restaurant with drive-thru service.
The proposal calls for a single-story eatery with operational hours from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily. There would be 29 parking spots on-site, more than double the required minimum of 13 spaces, according to city planning staff.
The Wendy’s would sit on an existing 0.73-acre site on the east side of San Ramon Valley Boulevard, between the intersections with Purdue Road and Fostoria Way/Deerwood Road and backing up to Interstate 680.
The city is considering whether to approve land-use permit, and development plan and architectural review applications for the project. It would be exempt from California Environmental Quality Act guidelines as in-fill development, according to city associate planner Cindy M. Yee.
City officials recommend the commission receive their staff report Tuesday evening, open the public hearing, take citizen comments and continue the matter to Aug. 4.
Next up, the commissioners will hold a workshop about the proposed mixed-use apartment and commercial complex. The project is listed as a discussion-only item on the agenda, with no decisions to be made at the meeting, according to city staff.
The discussion will give the commission an opportunity to provide feedback to the applicant and property owners to see if the proponents have addressed comments from the May 5 commission workshop and if the project “is generally heading in the right direction,” according to city associate planner Shinei Tsukamoto.
City planning staff thinks the applicant has responded to commission comments thus far and the project is on track to meet required development standards, Tsukamoto wrote in his staff report.
The updated proposal calls for 169 apartments with five live/work units, 2,477 square feet in new corner retail space, a two-level parking garage and retention of the existing 6,200-square-foot Windmill Farms market.
Those figures include adjustments since the May workshop, when the project included four more apartment units and almost 4,600 more square feet in residential space. The proposed commercial square footage has remained the same.
The project would be located at a 3.55-acre site on the west side of San Ramon Valley Boulevard at the corner of Deerwood Road, across from In-N-Out Burger.
The main complex would be four stories, with ground-level commercial spaces and apartments above. The residential component would include 26 affordable units (15% of the overall home count), with remaining 10% to be paid as in-lieu fee to fulfill the affordable-housing obligation, Tsukamoto said.
The project has been revamped several times since the original proposal in 2014, with reductions in overall apartment units (from 175 to 169), units per acre (from 49.3 to 47.6) and average building height (from 49.9 feet to 46.4 feet), according to Tsukamoto.
Following the workshop, the next steps for the San Ramon Valley Apartments complex would include preparing an environmental review document and returning to the Planning Commission for a public hearing at future date yet-undermined.
In other business Tuesday evening, the commissioners will discuss their liaison assignments. The meeting is set to start at 7 p.m. at San Ramon City Hall, 2222 Camino Ramon.
I am truly baffled why our leaders aren’t hearing us. When the survey responses came out about eating and shopping in our town, they overwhelmingly said more fine dining and better shopping in our town since the majority of us leave town to do these. How many burger joints must we have people!!!???!!
Please NO MORE fast food chains!!!! Let’s put in something like Tender Greens in Walnut Creek. I agree–we always leave San Ramon to go out to dinner b/c we don’t want to dine at fast food. Also, do we need a Wendy’s across from In and Out?! This is awful. NO WENDY’S!!!!! I will never dine there.
I agree! No Wendys. More restaurants like Walnut Creek. And what’s going to happen to the old Max’s building?
Oh come on folks—no on eats at Tender Greens—look at the line-up at In and Out every day. Most of us love fast food and not rabbit food. This would be a great improvement for our neighborhood and just down the street from where the Wicked Eye used to be—or have you forgotten the San Ramon Valley’s only strip joint—We have lived here for 38 years and will do all we can do to oppose these yuppies who have taken over our city. I will testify for Wendy’s and I have nothing to do with the project.
It seems like the San Ramon planning commission really does not care about what the San Ramon residents want or need, as long as they get our hard earned tax money. The city is bursting at its seams with houses/townhomes, schools are overcrowded, and there are zero good restaurants. All they can think of is more residential with more fast-food burger joints. Seriously we need a brand new commission with real brains and ears which listens to the need of the people!!!
Do the City planners really think we need more traffic at Crow Canyon and San Ramon Valley Blvd? At some
point the quality of life in our town must become more important than another development. Lets not try and
look like Los Angeles where its a wasteland of fast food and apartments.
I am plenty OK with having all of the major fast food restaurants being accessible close by.
Wendy’s is not one of my favorites, but to each their own. (McDonald’s being the worst, IMO.) Would rather see another brand, but I’ll give Wendy’s a try.
There is still plenty of spaces for a higher level, fine dining restaurant to “try” to make it in SR, if they want to. No need to ban a fast food restaurant.
Each restaurant stands on its own. If people want to use it, it will survive, If not, it will turn over.
Just let people make their own choices and vote with their feet. Capitalism works on its own.
Stop trying to force people into your agenda.
As for new apartments and commercial:
Go to it!
But PLEASE make sure that there is more than enough PARKING spaces (and forget the “compact spaces” failed idea).
Make sure that all the customers and users of this new building have no reason to ever encroach upon other parking areas. That should be one of the highest priorities of the Planning Dept/Council on every proposed project!
Yet it always seems to be on a back-burner and first-to-be-compromised level of thought.
Great! More traffic and more crazy drivers.
Wendy’s is a good idea from a jobs-for-young people perspective.
Even though this is an affluent area, there are plenty of hard-working teens who need and want a starter job. Wendy’s is good for the local economy!
Have any of you looked at the lot that Wendy’s is proposing to use? It has been empty forever and no ‘fine dining’ restaurant has chosen to move in there. Now a buyer comes up and offers to buy the property and put a Wendy’s there and you want the city to say “no”. Are you willing to buy the empty lot from the current owner – no? Then the planning commission will judge the project on its merits and according to the current zoning and land use.
Just because you don’t want a Wendy’s doesn’t mean that the planning commission has to turn down everything that isn’t Esin’s or the like.
You buy the property and you get to say what goes on it.
Is Wendy’s trying to capture the inpatient In N Out customer? Good luck. The success of In N Out, Five Guys and The Habit is overwhelming evidence that fast food doesn’t have to be degraded with chemicals and short cuts. 15% of an affordable housing demographic will not support archaic fast food.
San Ramon already has over 3000 affordable units. So I don’t understand your comment about 15% affordable demographic. I suspect that Habit, In-and-Out and Burger King all cater to more than just the low income demographic in San Ramon.
The City of San Ramon doesn’t pick winners and losers in the retail arena. The economic marketplace will pick the winers and losers. You vote with your wallet. Go to the places you like and avoid the places you don’t like. Time will tell what stays and what goes.
There was a BIG uproar in Dublin about 10+ years ago when Hooter’s moved into the old Bob’s Big Boy restaurant on San Ramon Road & Dublin Blvd. Hundreds said is was horrible and they would never go there and it would be out of business in a year. Well 10 years later, it is one of the more successful Hooter’s in the chain. Go figure. I guess ALL of the customers and ALL of the wait staff are from out of Dublin, since NOBODY in Dublin wanted it.
What about the impending development at Bollinger Canyon and Crow Canyon upcoming development-is it Faria? I don’t recall the number of residents projected for that development, nor the traffic study results, but it does not seem prudent to add this many cars, homes, students, water requirements, etcetera to an already overburdened infrastructure.
Where will water come from to service all of these new developments? Do we really need another Dougherty Valley house farm that never stops construction? What about schools? The schools in Dougherty Valley are bursting at the seams, but more homes keep being built. The overcrowding of San Ramon schools will just continue in west San Ramon; Twin Creeks and Bollinger Canyon Elementary Schools cannot grow in time to accept the inevitable flood of students. Where is the money for new schools coming from?
I don’t really care about Wendy’s going in to the empty lot. I will always head to In ‘n Out for the real food treat.
Gianni’s is a great San Ramon restaurant, with some of the best Italian food ever, and is right on SRV Bld.
I truly hope that development is contained in San Ramon, and that the Council considers both the impact to our environment, and to our school district, before moving ahead with this project.
Steve,
I was referencing the proportion of affordable housing for the mixed use Apartment Project, NOT the entire city. I was insinuating that the Wendy’s customer is the affordable housing demographic. I have no idea what the other eating establishment demos are or even what Wendy’s is. I won’t be ‘voting’ for it.
In 2002 the voters of San Ramon approved a general plan that included building the Faria project. That ship sailed in 2002 when the General Plan was voted on by the San Ramon voters. That process gave the land owner the right to build and/or sell to a developer.
EBMUD has confirmed that they will supply the water for the project. Talk to the EBMUD Board members if you have a problem with that.
SRVUSD has confirmed that they will provide room at their existing schools for all incoming students. They are collecting development fees from the developer as the homes get built. The school district was offered a school site in the development and they turned it down. Talk to the school board members if you have a problem with that.
Faria is the last large developable property in San Ramon. Future developments in San Ramon will be more like the development projected for the old Outpost property. Or the KB Homes project at the old cement plant on Norris Cyn Rd.
High density development is ruining the fundamental character of San Ramon & the planners/city council do not care. Just wait till Faria is built, and the high density stack and pack gets built by Sunset development just west of the new city hall. Our once really nice city is being turned into another “too many rats in a cage” city that lacks any character at all. If you do not believe that the city does not care what residents think, just review councilman Perkins comment (video on city’s web site, 8-4-14) about the woman that said she may have to move away because of the declining quality of life here, to that Perkins said go ahead and move away, it makes no difference to the city. Wake up people, you are electing these people!
It’s too bad that town council and planners really don’t care about what goes in on the empty lots. They used to care and took forever to approve anything along San Ramon Valley Blvd. Another fast food place is not what I would like to see, but if Wendy’s pays and it gets approved then that’s what goes in. As far as apartments on Outpost site, it’s better than more strip retail and stores. San Ramon will look more and more like high density and overbuilt Dublin in a few years and yes traffic will increase.