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March 31, 2011 Zoning Enforcement Official City of San Leandro 835 E. 14th Street San Leandro; CA 92477 Re: PLN2011-00012, 908 Dowling Blvd. Minor Site Plan Review To whom it may concern: We are writing this letter as the concerned owners and occupants of 900 Dowling Blvd, the property directly adjacent to and West of the applicants and as over 20 year residents of the City of San Leandro. My wife and I strongly disagree with the findings of the City Planning Staff that the proposed project is in substantial compliance with all the Residential Site Plan Review Standards. There are several significant items of the Standards that have been ignored or marginalized and those items are directly detrimental to the use and value of my property and others property owners of San Leandro. I am listing my detailed objections as follows: • From AR.S and AR.25: "Additions shall not have a "tacked on" appearance". This statement is important enough to be listed 2 times in the Ordinances. The application design clearly has a "tacked on" appearance; no effort what -so -ever has been made to integrate the addition into the existing 1 -story Bungalow Style home other than a roof cricket to divert roof drainage away from the addition and a "belly band" at the second floor line. It is a stacked "2 -story box" addition directly at the rear of the existing. This design is clearly in direct conflict with the Citys' stated standard that the architecture is appropriate and consistently applied. In the past, prior to design specific ordinances, San Leandro had many projects like this one. The Ordinances were created to stop these kinds of insensitive building projects. This is not an appropriate or attractive design_ Notice from the photographs, enclosed with this letter, showing the "story poles" in actual context and more revealing, the same photograph with the mass of the addition (between the story poles) shaded. These photos are taken from street level on the surrounding streets. They show that this addition will be very visible from many public sides. Compare the 2-dimensional conceptual architectural drawings to the actual context photos; the differences are striking. This is not good architecture for the City of San Leandro. There are other elements lacking consistency, The Mediterranean styling of the existing house is without overhangs while the addition utilizes overhangs typical of other styles. The two roof treatments are not compatible. An attempt was made to de-emphasize the mass by applying a "belly band" at the second floor line of the addition; this does absolutely nothing for mitigating the visual height. It will only be visible while on the sides or rear of the house when in close proximity; at that distance, the 19' + wall height is the dominant visual impact. • From AR.5: "The physical impacts to neighbors are minimized". No effort has been made at all to mitigate the negative impact of a 19 foot high wall, 5 feet away from the only private open space that our home has for outdoor use. As you can see from the proposed drawings, our home has a narrow side yard 12 feet wide as the only private open space. An addition that created this situation was made about 40 years ago, before current standards. The privacy, sunlight and airflow to our property will be adversely impacted by the addition of the neighbor. have enclosed photographs from the interior of our Family Room looking east towards the "story poles" of the proposed addition and also looking across the yard, at an angle, towards the addition. Again by shading between the "story poles", you can see the massive nature of the wall that we would face. We currently receive early morning sun into the Family Room and it's a great Page 1 of 2