Cupertino staff, consultant begin public process to write objective design standards for multifamily housing

City of Cupertino staff and a PlaceWorks consultant on Tuesday evening launched a community workshop to begin drafting objective design standards (ODS) intended to streamline design review for multifamily and mixed‑use housing and preserve enforceable local design rules under recent state housing laws. Greg Goodfellow, a PlaceWorks project manager, led the presentation and said the work is intended to convert subjective guidelines into measurable standards that can be checked ministerially.

The draft standards will apply to multifamily and residential mixed‑use developments (defined in the presentation as projects with at least 30 percent of square footage devoted to housing) and are not intended to cover single‑family homes, non‑infill sites or hazardous or formally historic sites. Goodfellow said ODS are “standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment” and are “uniformly verifiable by reference to an external and uniform benchmark,” meaning the document will favor measurable items such as dimensions, numeric ranges and checklists over soft language like “complement neighboring homes.”

The nut graf: the city said it is developing ODS to respond to state housing laws and to retain local control over design. Goodfellow cited a provision of state law saying cities “cannot disapprove a multifamily housing project…unless it is shown to be inconsistent with objective, quantifiable…