Nurseries spring up at Planning Commission for different issues
Part of Sakamoto property will become eight homes
Green Thumb fights paving
By Jeff Kearns
It was nursery night at last week's Planning Commission meeting. No, the chambers weren't filled with shrubs, but commissioners did have two nursery items on the agenda May 12--Sakamoto Plants, which will be selling off part of its lot to be subdivided for housing, and Green Thumb nursery, which needs a conditional-use permit.
The commission unanimously approved an application by Pinn Bros. Construction to subdivide part of the Sakamoto site into eight lots and rezone it from residential duplex to single-family residential.
The nursery is on a 3.25-acre site on Camino del Cerro, and the development would take up two of those acres. Owner Paul Sakamoto, the nursery's fourth owner since it opened in 1961, says he'll continue to operate at the same site.
The development will connect to the end of Verde Court, a short street off Los Gatos-Almaden Road that's been a dead end for 38 years. Right now, the street ends at a fence, but the development would extend the street and end it with a standard cul-de-sac bulb that would allow vehicles to turn around.
The only building on the proposed site is a shed for the nursery, which will be demolished. The site was originally used as a kiwi vineyard and as a growing lot for plants sold at the nursery, including fruit trees.
Most of the homes Pinn Bros. wants to build will be single story.
Originally, at open meetings in October and February, developers started with a pitch for duplexes, but that didn't fly with neighbors, who said they didn't want the additional traffic and noise associated with duplexes.
"None of us wanted duplexes," neighbor Christine Throm said after the meeting. About a dozen neighbors showed up for the hearing on the Pinn Bros. proposal, but none of them addressed the commission on it. Throm said that most of the neighbors support the subdivision plan.
One thing neighbors say they'll be pushing for when the individual homes come back to the commission is for bigger setbacks from the property line.
Planning commissioners generally liked the proposal.
"This is a thoughtful plan," said Kathryn Morgan. "Pinn Bros. have shown an unusual amount of cooperation with the neighbors and the town." In making the findings needed to approve the subdivision and zone change, Morgan said that the development would improve the neighborhood by giving the dead-end street a turnaround without having to disturb the nursery.
The houses will range in size from 2,550 to 2,850 square feet. The project won't require an environmental impact report, and because it is projected to generate fewer than 20 peak-hour car trips per day, it won't need a traffic report either.
In an unrelated matter, Sakamoto Plants will be coming to the commission next month with an application for a use permit, which it doesn't have right now.
That's the same issue Green Thumb Nursery on Winchester Boulevard needs to resolve. The commission approved their permit on a 5-2 vote May 12, but that's subject to some tough conditions the nursery says it can't meet.
Even though the nursery has been at the same spot for almost 50 years, it still doesn't have a conditional-use permit. Because it predates the use-permit ordinances the town adopted in the '60s, it was grandfathered in and given a break--but that expired in 1997 because it didn't meet code requirements.
What it needs is a driveway, but the nursery owners, Steve Mohlo and Biret Adden, say that paving the gravel drive into the nursery would create additional runoff, give off heat in hot weather that could harm plants, and subtract from the atmosphere of the place.
"This is more like a small-town nursery, and you're going to lose that," property owner Tooru Hirose told commissioners.
Commissioners agreed, but didn't have the ability to get around a town ordinance requiring that all parking areas be paved.
Green Thumb can also apply for a variance, but planning staff, in a report to the commission, say that's questionable: Commissioners would need to find that there are special circumstances for the property or that giving the nursery a variance wouldn't be a special privilege.
At this point, Green Thumb can choose to try its luck by appealing the decision to the Town Council. Councilmembers have more latitude in deciding cases like this one, and would be the deciding body for a variance. Filing an appeal, however, would also mean that the council could re-examine any aspect of the application and perhaps reverse the Planning Commission's approval.
The deadline for Green Thumb to file an appeal is May 24.
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