Carmel Valley board to hear one more One Paseo update before November decision

The One Paseo development project will return to the Carmel Valley Community Planning Board for an update at its Thursday, Oct. 22 meeting.

The tentative schedule is for the planning board to make its recommendation on One Paseo at its November meeting, with Kilroy aiming to get San Diego Planning Commission approval in December 2015 or January 2016 and San Diego City Council approval by February 2016.

The Oct. 22 meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the Carmel Valley Library.

The current plan is 95,871 square feet of retail, 280,00 square feet of office space and 608 residential units. The plan represents a 61 percent reduction in retail and a 43 percent reduction in office space for a total of 1,175,871 square feet.

In accordance with requirements for previous San Diego City Council approval, 10 percent of the residential units will be affordable.

Kilroy held a series of public workshops in July and August to help inform its revised design. According to a September presentation to the planning board, residents provided feedback such as they wanted to see the project connect more to the community, abundant and accessible parking, and great attention paid to landscaping.

Residents at the workshops also wanted Kilroy to promote the use of outdoor seating areas, add green space around the office and parking, and create a “wedding cake effect” with taller buildings toward the center of One Paseo.

In September, Kilroy showed the planning board its renderings of the massing of the new project, how it will look from Del Mar Heights, El Camino Real and High Bluff Drive.

Chair Frisco White was complimentary about the office buildings, which have been terraced and articulated so they don’t have the bulk that the community would have seen with the project’s previous design.

The new massing, landscaping and public paseos into the project seem to be an improvement over the old design, White said.

Emergency response times continue to be a concern for some residents, and some still feel that the project is too big, more than the 500,000 square feet that it is entitled for.

With the new One Paseo, Kilroy has pledged to reduce the average daily trips to 14,000.

The company is updating the transportation demand management (TDM) program to encourage alternative modes of transportation, incorporating a privately funded shuttle program and a traffic signal synchronization program, and has reduced the signalized intersections from two to one.

To view renderings and past presentations, visit onepaseo.com.