2.1. A New Code for Downtown Santa Clara

This Section provides a non-regulatory introduction to the Code All standards and topics referenced in this section are found in later sections of this Code

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FRANKLIN STREET IN 1898

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FRANKLIN STREET IN THE 1950S

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FRANKLIN STREET TODAY

• A. Implementing the Vision. The essential character and community value of the historic downtown that Santa Clara lost in the 1970s was defined by its public realm – the beautiful, comfortable, lively, useful and entertaining “outdoor rooms of the community” – and by the unique buildings and lively mix of retail, dining, entertainment and civic uses that lined and activated those public spaces The same is true of the envisioned future Downtown Santa Clara Within the streets, plazas, parks, paseos, courtyards and buildings of the restored Downtown that the civic, cultural, economic and social life of Santa Clara will once again be centered

• B. The Precise Plan. Developed through a 3-year community process, The Precise Plan has clearly defined the public space network for the restored downtown, which will act as its organizational and mobility framework The starting point for the public realm framework is the systematic restoration of the historic street grid and resulting pattern of very walkable square blocks, to which the Precise Plan has added a number of very special new public gathering spaces in the form of plazas and greens In addition to defining the vision for the restored downtown, the Precise Plan includes detailed standards and design guidelines for the public realm, including all the streets, plazas, parks and other public open spaces, as well as implementation strategies and procedures

• C. Conceptual Vision. The Precise Plan also provides a clear conceptual vision for the types, sizes, uses and design character of the buildings that will shape and activate those public spaces Through the hard work of the Downtown Community Task Force, city staff and officials, and the planning and design team a remarkably detailed and nuanced vision has emerged, defining specific building size, form, use and design characteristics on a street by street and block by block basis

• D. Development Standards and Guidelines. The standards and guidelines of this Code are both “place-based” and “form-based”, with all standards and guidelines keyed to a Regulating Plan, which mirrors exactly the public realm plan in the Precise Plan This enables to Code to assign building height standards, building setback standards, building use standards, and building form and design standards and guidelines on a street-by-street and block-by-block basis in order to systematically and predictably implement the community’s vision

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THE ROLE OF BUILDINGS —The walls of outdoor rooms

• E. The Role of Buildings. If the streets and plazas and greens of the Downtown are “the floors” of the outdoor rooms of the public realm, it is buildings that form “the walls” of those rooms, providing a strong sense of spatial enclosure (a k a “sense of place”) and activating the public real with retail, restaurant, entertainment, civic, office and residential uses and activities In conventional suburban environments, buildings are interspersed with parking lots and landscaping in freeform patterns, with buildings essentially free-floating in “open space” that is designed primarily for driving and parking cars In downtowns and the traditional neighborhoods that usually surround them, buildings are set purposefully at or near the sidewalks, with the facade of every building and every development project working together to generate a steady but varied “streetwall” to define human-scale pedestrian-oriented public spaces The streets surely accommodate automobiles, but are designed first and foremost for people It is the constant presence of pedestrians, and high levels of human activity in the downtown public realm that makes it attractive, active, safe and comfortable throughout the day and late into the evening The safety and comfort of the that public realm also depends to a very large degree on the “eyes on the street” that are provided

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OPEN SPACES —Parks and square form part of downtown's varied set of urban spaces.

by shopkeepers, customers, residents and office workers within the buildings This requires that all facades include generous amounts of windows Windows are “the eyes of the building”, giving the entire Downtown “a lived-in look ” Blank walls are very destructive of comfortable urban places, most particularly at the ground floor level Further, as discussed below, the design of ground floor building frontages must be such that ground floor occupants do not feel the need to keep window blinds closed all the time for privacy, as windows that are always covered do little more for pedestrian comfort and safety than blank walls

• F. Coding Approach. This Code is a system for ensuring that each new increment of private development and public improvement contributes to achieving the community’s vision as documented in the Precise Plan Unlike “a project” – which may be designed and built all at once by a single developer or investor – “a plan and code” is a recipe for ensuring that many projects built by many people over the course of many years will generate a coherent, cohesive and varied set of urban spaces and places, consistent with the community’s vision and aspirations The code is essentially “the vision, reverse engineered” into a set of rules and

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procedures which, if followed, will enable each new project to meet market demand, to express the vision and creativity of its developer and designers, while also contributing to the making of a complete, new downtown of sustained and growing long-term value

• G. Code Regulations. The Code regulates all of the standard zoning topics related to building use, building heights and setbacks, parking requirements, and permitting processes It also provides standards for building form and design

1. Building Placement. To emphatically define the public spaces of the Downtown, building facades must be built at or near – and parallel to – the frontage line or back of sidewalk Along Franklin Street and other retail streets, most building facades must be built right on the frontage line in the classic “main street shopfront” pattern Along streets with existing or new housing, buildings must be set back from the sidewalk behind shallow landscaped yards, providing a degree of privacy for residents and compatibility with nearby homes The design of building ground floors and front setback areas– see Frontages, below – is systematically correlated with building placement to optimize the function and value of the ground floor uses in that building and in surrounding properties

2. Building Height. Along Franklin Street and within the downtown core, building heights may vary from 2 to7 stories, or up to 9 allowed by height bonus provisions that may be granted for exceptional projects But buildings along the Neighborhood Edges – particularly along Benton, Madison, and Homestead – must be “scaled down” for compatibility with surrounding historic neighborhoods The taller buildings in the core provide very strong spatial definition and decidedly “urban character” to that area They also provide opportunities for significant quantities of housing and office uses in addition to the downtown commercial uses, and generate economic value capable of supporting the construction cost of efficient, shared, structured parking facilities that will enable such a concentration of active uses without a surrounding “sea of parking lots ”

• H. Code Provisions. In addition to regulating overall building heights, the Code includes provisions that regulate the heights of ground floors, to ensure generous spaces for shops, restaurants and other active downtown uses It also includes provisions for manipulating the “apparent height”, or “scale”, of buildings to ensure greater compatibility of taller buildings with surrounding existing and future smaller buildings For example, the tallest new buildings are required to provide clearly defined 2-story bases that are approximately the height of the two-story historic downtown buildings and existing two-story homes in surrounding neighborhoods As described below, building facade standards include provisions requiring building height variations in tandem with building width standards to differentiate adjacent buildings one from the other

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BUILDING PLACEMENT —Shopfronts line the back of the sidewalk

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BUILDING HEIGHT —scaling down from the center to surrounding residential

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FACADE ORGANIZATION —This wide single building breaks down its scale into different facade designs to better fit the neighborhood

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BUILDING WIDTH —50' wide building organized into vertical bays

1. Building Facades, Scale and Character. Quite literally “the walls” of each street and block of the Downtown, building facade standards are coordinated with the street design, building height and building use standards to ensure that the scale and character of each public space is consistent with the vision and intent of the Precise Plan Facade design is at the intersection of architecture and urban design, of development and placemaking, and done well can ensure that each building meets the programmatic and financial goals of property owners, investors and users, while positively contributing to the making of a fine new downtown public realm for Santa Clara in the primary ways

2. Facade Organization. The historic buildings within the downtown core along Franklin Street were typically 25 to 60 feet wide, such that each block was comprised of 5 to 10 individual buildings That pattern was based on the original subdivision of the Downtown into 25- or 30-foot-wide lots, and the development of buildings on one or two or occasionally three lots Most of the residential lots across Benton Street, Madison Street and Homestead Street from the new Downtown are 50 or 60 feet wide, and the primary masses of most of the homes are 25 or 30 feet wide All new buildings in the Downtown are expected to reflect and respect those historic patterns by incorporating comparably sized and scaled building forms and facade patterns, whether in buildings similar in overall size to lost historic structures, or are buildings and projects whose overall size is considerably larger This is not an exercise in nostalgia or “historical correctness”, it is to ensure that the new downtown is compatible with (“in scale with”) the surrounding historic neighborhoods, and to provide it with a uniquely Santa Clara identity and ambiance

3. Building Width. The original historic downtown buildings were built on or two or three of the original 25- or 30-foot-wide lots, and because many were built before automobiles became a common transportation mode did not include large parking lots or structures within the blocks Accordingly, all new building facades are expected to be organized into “bays” – groupings of doors, windows and other architectural elements Further, the facades of wide development projects are also required to be organized into more than one “Massing Increment,” as perceived from the street Each 300-foot block face will contribute at least 4 such Increments to the public realm

4. Vertical Organization. In addition to organizing door and window openings into bays and buildings horizontally, fine downtown buildings are prototypically organized vertically with clear bases, middles and tops

• a. Bases: In the classic American downtown mixed-use building, the base is composed mainly of large, clear glass shopfront windows and entries, and made of fine, heavy, strong materials such as stone or brick, that look great close up and age gracefully Some large ground floor openings are also building entries and lobbies leading to upper floor residences and offices

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VERTICAL ORGANIZATION —Base, middle, and top

• b. Middles: Upper floors are typically fenestrated with the smaller windows of apartments, offices or hotel rooms, typically grouped and stacked above the large ground floor windows in simple rectangular patterns In some buildings, however, large windows comparable in scale to those of the ground floor may continue to the upper floors, while in buildings with residential ground floors the smaller window pattern of the upper floors may extend to the ground floor

• c. Tops: Building tops may be designed in many different ways Some have visible pitched roofs, others are provided with projecting architectural cornices, and some have very simple caps on parapet walls The scale of buildings taller than 3 or 4 stories may benefit from more emphatic articulation of their top floor, with techniques including special materials or window patterns, recessed balconies or porticos, or roof terraces with pergolas or roofs

• d. Combinations: Finally, for taller buildings, in addition to strong tops, two-story bases are required to moderate the appearance of height and to establish a strong two-story scale from the perspective of the pedestrian Most of the buildings of Santa Clara’s historic downtown were two stories tall, as are most

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BUILDING FRONTAGES —good design of this space invites activity

of the fine historic homes in the surrounding neighborhoods So establishing a two-story “scale” in this way within the downtown is a simple way to make new taller buildings fit in gracefully

5. Frontages. Frontages are those linear strips of space between the building face and vehicular traffic These are generally the spaces with the highest concentrations of pedestrian activity, commercial activity, and social activity – the spaces through which pedestrians move throughout the Downtown, window shop, dine outdoors, and enter and exit buildings Accordingly, the design and function of frontages is critically important to the success and value of each and every ground floor use, very likely the most important single topic addressed by this Code

6. Privacy Modulation. A fundamental role of frontages in urban places is as “privacy modulators” for ground floor uses In suburban environments, privacy for ground floor uses is provided by setting buildings back behind wide landscaped “buffers” and parking lots, which have no place in downtown streetscapes, so more nuanced manipulations of building facades and judicious use or shallow

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RETAIL EXPOSURE —Clear glass blurs the barrier between interior and exterior space. Note: This example is an exceptionally wide expanse of glass. Most facades will be divided into multiple smaller bays divided by vertical structural elements.

setbacks is required The Frontage Standards and Guidelines of this Code work in combination with the building setback and facade design standards and guidelines to appropriately calibrate privacy for each type of ground floor use

7. Retail Exposure. Retail shops thrive on openness and visibility to passing pedestrians and motorists, so retail frontages are characterized by wide sidewalks and large, clear glass openings set right on the back of the sidewalk, effectively “blurring the line” between interior and exterior space Within the wide sidewalks, outdoor dining or merchandizing may spill out onto the sidewalk next to the shopfront, or within the street tree and furnishing band next to the curb, or in some cases within the curbside zone in lieu of parking or vehicular drop-off

8. Residential and Office Privacy. Ground floor residents or office workers, on the other hand, do not want every passing pedestrian looking into their home or office, so residential and office frontages set the building back behind a shallow landscaped front yard and often elevate the ground floor 2 or 3 feet above the sidewalk so that sills of their smaller ground floor windows are at or above the eye level of passing pedestrians Sidewalks are comfortably wide, but narrower

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RESIDENTIAL AND OFFICE PRIVACY —elevated ground floors

than along retail frontages, and street trees are typically planted in continuous planting strips that further enhance the “front yard” character of the streetscape

9. Intermediate/Flex Frontages. A variety of intermediate or “user-reconfigurable” frontage types are defined to enable ground floor uses to change over time with market demand, without major reconstruction each time the use changes Office/ Retail Flex frontages enable occupation of ground floor spaces with office uses, and conversion to more active retail and restaurant uses in the future This can be accomplished simply by allowing more window coverings than permissible in retail establishments, and/or my providing marginally smaller windows than classic retail, still suitable for future retail or restaurant tenants Residential/ Retail Flex may include similar strategies, but only in buildings set back from the sidewalk, with landscaping in the setback area for residential use that can be replaced with sidewalk paving in the future for retail tenants This is a complex topic and is addressed in the standards and guidelines of the Code

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3 Overview of Standards