I attended a joint City Council/Planning Commission meeting this morning. As a matter of full disclosure, I did not stay for the entire meeting but did stay for the overview of what Burlingame plans in the next few years. In the North, a plan for a new work/live flex space neighborhood, termed the "innovation industrial" area is what our city leaders envision where today's North Rollins Rd. light industrial is today. Along the Bayfront, more commercial development including the former drive-in site predicted to bring 3000 jobs to Burlingame.
Bottom line is that the consultants believe there is capacity in Burlingame to expand by 10,000 more people and/or 4200 dwellings.
You can read the staff report for yourselves.
But even today, there are lots of projects in the pipeline that will change the face of Burlingame. From memory: There is the four story office on Howard and Myrtle, the four story on Highland, the four story on Lorton, a massive high density residential complex on Carolan, another large high density residential project on Lorton (where the two city parking lots are located,) a proposed residential complex along Myrtle near Bayswater, a proposed large residential project on the hospital land behind the current hospital and then there's the Broadway grade separation project that will create a one-story to two-story berm running from before Broadway to just before Burlingame High School. Not to mention the Post Office project which could be another very large high density residential complex or the new Recreation Center project, Top Golf on the bayfront and the Hyatt theater site development. I've probably forgotten a few.
It seems that either the consultants numbers are off or that city council and planning commissioners have not thought of the impacts of these projects cumulatively. This folks is a lot of expansion in a relatively short span of time. Some of these projects are good in their intent, but put them all together and you have a very different town. In my opinion, it will not be the "quaint" Burlingame we know today.
I spoke at the meeting of the importance of investigating how our infrastructure can handle such expansion. How will our schools be affected? How will our sewer, storm drains, roads, traffic and parking be impacted. Of course there will be environmental studies to try to help answer those questions, but we all know that the conclusions will support whatever plan the council favors.
One council member asked that staff reach out to the current property owners in the North Rollins Rd area to see if they could get on board with the idea of a innovation neighborhood. I would ask, where is the outreach to the entire community about all of this expansion? At the meeting were the folks who always show up for these meetings. No new faces. It is clear that more intense outreach to the broader community needs to be done and quickly. I know there have been numerous meeting of a subcommittee made up of citizens and business people. That's great but it's not nearly enough in my opinion. I know that city staff and council will say that this is just the beginning and that there will plenty of time to react. I suspect those future meetings will be poorly attended as well.
I'm concerned. Are you?
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