Update on upcoming Draft EIR for
Curtis Park Village development 

By Jennifer Jennings
Special to the Viewpoint

The Curtis Park Village Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) is now scheduled to be released in late September 2005. The Draft EIR, required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), is the next step in the city's review of the proposed Curtis Park Village development.

CEQA requires the city, as the "lead agency," to explain in detail what the project's significant adverse environmental impacts will be. Based on that assessment, the city is obligated to modify the project to avoid or lessen those negative impacts, or explain why it is not possible to reduce those impacts.

Once the document is available, the public will have at least 30 days to review the Draft EIR, and to provide any comments or challenges on the initial assessment to the city. Taking advantage of the opportunity to comment is critical. Besides putting public officials on notice of citizens' concerns, it is also a prerequisite to any judicial review of the City Council's decision on those issues addressed in the comments.

The EIR consultants must respond to each of the comments and those responses are then published as part of the Final EIR. Typically the final report accompanies the staff recommendation to the Planning Commission and eventually to the City Council for a vote on the entire development application.

Three major issues have been raised neighborhood residents in conjunction with regarding the environmental review of the Curtis Park Village project.

The first is the independence of the environmental consultant - the consultant is under contract with the developer, not the city. A Curtis Park neighbor has circulated a petition on this issue.

The second issue, raised by SCNA and various neighbors, is the way that the city will evaluate the increase in traffic on neighborhood streets that will result from the project. Traditional methodologies to evaluate traffic considers big changes to major streets, but are not sensitive enough to consider large impacts on small streets, such as the average Curtis Park street.

The third issue, promoted by several Curtis Park residents and Council Member Lauren Hammond, is a proposal advocated by many to build a pedestrian bridge from the project to the light rail station. According to the developer, there are a number of technical and financial obstacles that would have to be overcome. The Curtis Park Village developer is recommending that, instead of a new bridge, the Sutterville over-crossing be enhanced to accommodate pedestrians trying to access the station.

Regarding the method of traffic analysis, city staff have indicated that they plan to use only the traditional methods of traffic assessment as part of this environmental review process. Those methods measure the increase or decrease of traffic flow based on the changes in volume of traffic at intersections.

As an example, when a smaller street can accommodate four times the existing volume of traffic without approaching gridlock, the change is not considered significant using traditional methods. Traffic impacts will likely only by considered significant at major intersections, such as Broadway and 24th Street.

With this proposed analysis, mitigation to address traffic flow might involve restriping 24th Street to provide more lanes of traffic. However, quadrupling the traffic on the small Curtis Park neighborhood streets that will provide access to the project is likely to be deemed insignificant and thus can be ignored under CEQA. SCNA has proposed that the city adopt significance standards for traffic impacts on neighborhood streets, but city staff is only using the traditional type of analysis.

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