Palo Alto Town & Country Village looks to construct apartment buildings

After fiercely opposing a recently approved development with 10 condominiums on an adjacent lot, the owners of Town & Country Village are now looking to build a pair of seven-story apartment buildings on a parking lot next to the shopping center.

Real estate investor Ellis Partners, which bought the property in 2004, filed a pre-application with Palo Alto last week for 158 apartment units split between two seven-story buildings on top of the parking lots near Encina Avenue, which runs along the northern end of the property behind the main retail and shopping areas.

The two buildings at 44 and 88 Encina Ave. would flank the proposed condominium development that the Stormland LLC is hoping to construct at 70 Encina Ave., a project that has been going through the city’s approval process for the past two years. Ellis Partners has consistently opposed the condominium project, even after Stormland significantly scaled it back based on feedback from Ellis Partners and the city’s planning commissioners.

The application is being processed as a Planned Home Zoning proposal, which means the developer will ask the city to bypass certain zoning and design element requirements as long as one in five units are set aside for low-income residents. PHZ projects must go through many public hearings before approval, and the developers often incorporate feedback from city officials and revise their original plans.

Preliminary renderings of the apartment buildings appear to take inspiration from architectural details in the existing buildings at Town & Country, with clay tile roofs and covered walkways. Plans show each residential building equipped with a wellness center and a sky lounge on the uppermost floor.

The visual elements are intentional, according to Hannah Perkins, Vice President at Ellis Partners.

“We care deeply about the character of Town & Country. That’s why we’ve invested in architecture and landscaping that respects the setting,” she said.

Ellis Partners emphasized that “every stage” of the project would prioritize minimizing impacts on existing retail on site. That includes maintaining existing parking capacity, even as the housing project would replace two surface lots at the back of the shopping center.

Each building would have three levels of parking. Collectively they would include 219 parking stalls, 150 for commercial use and 165 for residential use. The 150 commercial stalls will replace all the parking spaces that would be lost once the apartment buildings go up on the parking lot, according to a project description.

“The buildings are strategically sited to maintain key site connections, including access to the CalTrain Bike Path and vehicular circulation between Encina Ave and the shopping center,” the project description states.

To reduce the overall massing, the residential levels step back from the base and incorporate outdoor terraces, lowslung tile roofs and a “horizontal architectural language that visually connects with both the shopping center and other neighboring sites,” the description states.

If approved, the development would represent a bold new chapter for Town & Country, a dynamic shopping area near the intersection of El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road that was originally built in the ‘50s and that remains home to a variety of retail establishments, including restaurants and coffee shops, as well as storefronts for clothes, furniture and groceries.

Between the shopping center’s proximity to downtown Palo Alto, Stanford University and the Caltrain station, Ellis Partners hopes that the 158 units will make meaningful progress toward the city’s housing goals.

“This is an ideal place for new housing — close to schools, shopping, and transit. Building here allows residents to walk for their daily needs, reducing overall traffic. We believe this is a responsible way to help Palo Alto meet its housing needs,” said Patrick Flynn, Senior Vice President at Ellis Partners.

Ellis Partners officials hinted earlier this year that they may explore housing options. In opposing Stormland’s condominium plan, the mall owners were concerned about the parking impacts of the proposed residential development and suggested that the new community would be incompatible with the shopping area. As the project neared approval, Ellis began discussions with Stormland about collaborating on a larger housing project on the Encina Avenue lots, Dean Rubison, director of development at Ellis Partners, said at a February public hearing. The project, he suggested, would be far larger than the one Stormland had proposed, with more than 100 housing units.

“We look forward to further exploring the potential of a combined and master-planned project that would ensure operational compatibility with the existing and much-loved retail center and any future housing development,” Rubison said.

Despite Town & Country’s opposition, the council approved the condomonium project on April 14. In doing so, the council rezoned a surface parking lot behind Town & Country to accommodate the three-story project. If the council approves the Ellis Partners plan, the condominium complex would now be sandwiched between the two new apartment buildings.

This story originally appeared in Palo Alto Weekly. Riley Cooke is a reporter at Palo Alto Weekly and Palo Alto Online focusing on city government. Editor Gennady Sheyner contributed to this report.