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City staff outlines housing pipeline as neighbors press safety and notice concerns for El Camino projects
Summary
Planning staff detailed recent multifamily approvals and the city’s housing‑dashboard pipeline while residents pressed for more outreach and rigorous traffic studies — especially for the 3606 El Camino project, which neighbors say risks school routes and blocks lanes during deliveries.
Jennifer Armour, assistant director of Planning and Development Services, told a neighborhood town hall that recent state housing laws have limited some local control but that staff are working to keep new projects compatible with neighborhood design and safety standards. "The recent legislature ... limits the city in some ways," Armour said, and staff are negotiating with developers to align projects with local guidelines.
The discussion focused on a cluster of proposals near Page Mill and Kirchner and on a planned project at 3606 El Camino. A resident who identified safety concerns said truck deliveries to the site have blocked both lanes of traffic near Matadero and stressed that the roadways at and near the site are narrow and used as safe routes to school. The resident urged the city not to treat traffic studies as a "rubber stamp" and asked that studies capture weekend and off‑peak patterns.
Armour responded that staff can and have required traffic studies and construction management plans, and that city council added conditions to some projects to require compliance with those studies and specific construction management measures to protect safe routes to schools. She pointed residents to the city's housing dashboard for estimates of pipeline capacity: "total in the pipeline is 3,343; under plan review is almost 2,000; entitlement complete just over 1,200," Armour said at the meeting.
Why it matters: residents said they often learn of projects through neighborhood apps rather than directly from the city, and they urged earlier, clearer outreach and more robust traffic analyses where projects touch narrow neighborhood streets and school routes. Planning staff said they would continue to pursue collaborative reviews and to add conditions where legally allowable.
Next steps: residents were directed to paloalto.gov/city-hall/housing for the dashboard and were told that project conditions, traffic study findings and construction management plans remain the principal tools staff can apply as projects move through entitlement and permitting.
