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Board of Zoning Adjustments Regular Meeting December 6, 2007 Minute No. 2007-23 Page 6 of 16 parking space should be provided. However, many rooms should not be counted towards assembly, i.e., the Sunday School multipurpose room and lounge, the Sunday School classrooms, youth rooms and day care, because the children came with their parents and separate parking spaces should not be required for five year olds. His calculations, based on 8,800 square feet of assembly space, would require approximately 170 spaces. He also mentioned the on -street parking and the trade-off parking in the neighboring parking lots. The Fire Marshal had the ability to change the number of seats to accommodate aisle width, ADA access, egress, and back aisles independent of the other city entities, which would affect the number of overall parking spaces. Ed Bullock, church member, stated that his business was to help nonprofits to purchase real estate all over the country. He had encountered the same issues in other venues. In his opinion, the criteria for the Overlay were developed to exclude this site. In May 2006, they were encouraged by staff to move forward on this project, because it seemed to be the better solution. He believed that the conditions changed after the city administrator expressed his opinion "using old guidelines and ignoring the reality of the way the world works today." He asked that the Board make its decision based upon what were the best interests of the City San Leandro. The Board asked the following questions of Mr. Bullock: • Member Gilcrest noted that the speaker had characterized this situation as a blocking action. He agreed that the city had blocked the church's relocation. Member Gilcrest recalled that the city had agreed to create the Overlay when it was brought to their attention that no residential zoning areas had sufficient property to accommodate a church of this size. Now, there were more potential properties to consider than were available in 2005. The core argument made in the emails to the Board Members asserted unequal treatment. For the applicant to be treated unequally, someone else had to have been treated differently. Where was the assembly use that they were using in their argument? Of the 196 properties that made up the Overlay district, only 13 were larger than three acres, which was needed by the applicant. Of those 13 properties, only one, the Hudson Lumber parcel, could be appropriate for the church's needs. However, it was in contract. The problem with that parcel was that only one driveway over the railroad tracks was available, which was unacceptable for this kind of use. Several shopping centers were part of the 13 sites; however, staff was significantly resistant to taking a shopping center out of the retail mix and using one for a church. This building on Catalina had been empty for some time. He gave examples of land needs within the city years ago that were no longer needed and he posited that the industrial district might not be needed in the future. Member Gilcrest stated that the need for industrial districts had been debated on various levels. However, if an assembly use was allowed to come into an industrial area, then other assembly uses would have to be allowed, because it would truly be unequal treatment. How would he speak to people who believed that the precedent that would be set by allowing this assembly use in an industrial district would to lead to loss of too much industrial land in the future? He would leave the "Entertainment" argument to the attorney. However, the City, in its wisdom chose to pull 200 acres out of the industrial district to be included in