Millbrae Planning Commission recommends city-specific density bonus amendment to City Council

The City of Millbrae Planning Commission voted 4-0 on Oct. 6 to recommend that the City Council amend the city's density bonus ordinance to allow a local density bonus in addition to incentives provided by state law.

The proposed amendment updates Millbrae's code to reflect recent state changes to the density bonus framework and adds a separate city-provided density bonus that would apply only to projects within the Millbrae Station boundary, downtown and an El Camino Real corridor. The commission's vote sends the clean, revised ordinance — not a redline — to council for consideration.

The city-provided bonus is structured differently for rental and ownership projects. Under the proposal discussed, rental projects that allocate 5% of units to low-income households would receive a flat 15% city density bonus in addition to any state bonus. For ownership (for-sale) projects, a 15% moderate-income allocation would trigger a city bonus equal to the state bonus (effectively doubling the state-provided bonus for that allocation). City staff said city and state bonuses are calculated separately, which can increase rounding benefits (for example, two separate 1.5-unit calculations would each round up to 2 units, producing more total bonus units than summing before rounding).

Consultants from Harrison Associates explained the ordinance change is intended to increase the financial feasibility of projects that include affordable units by allowing developers to build more market-rate units whose revenues can offset the cost of affordable units. The consultants walked commissioners through example scenarios (a 10-unit for-sale project and a 100-unit rental project) showing how state and city bonuses could add market-rate units; one example showed a hypothetical 100-unit rental project receiving up to 95 additional market-rate units when combining state and city incentives under the allocations assumed.

Staff and consultants noted the amendment also updates Millbrae's code to align with recent state statutory changes, including the tiered bonus created by AB 1287 (effective 2024), which added a second tier of density bonus available after projects “max out” specified allocations in tier 1. The consultants described the tier 2 thresholds discussed in the presentation: to access the tier 2 scale a project must first meet the tier 1 max-out allocation (for example, 15% very low, 24% low, or 44% moderate in the tier 1 formulation cited in the presentation).

City staff told the commission they had revised the ordinance language in response to feedback from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and to better align waiver, concession, parking and design standard language with current state law. Staff and the consultants said they worked with the city's counsel to simplify and consolidate the ordinance language; they provided commissioners with the clean (final) version at the meeting and said a redlined version could be made available with the minutes for public review.

Commissioners asked for the redline showing what changed from prior drafts. Several commissioners said they would have preferred to receive the redline before the meeting; staff responded that the City Council will receive the Planning Commission's recommendation (the clean, final draft) and that staff can include redline materials in the administrative record and with the minutes for public access.

There were no public comments on the item. After discussion, a motion to approve and recommend the amendment to the City Council carried 4-0. Commissioner Wong was excused.