By Los Altos
Town Crier Staff Report
wo more office buildings are slated to join the street scape along El Camino Real in Los Altos.
The Los Altos City Council last week approved plans for a two-story, 21,000-square-foot office building at the former El Torito restaurant site and a two-story, 50,000-square-foot office building at the former Red Lobster restaurant site on the same block.
The addition of these buildings will mark the redevelopment of a major portion of the city’s stretch of El Camino starting from the North side of Los Altos Avenue down to the El Torito site near San Antonio Road.
All of the new developments in this area over recent months have been office or hotel space.
New Offices
Plans for the El Torito site include a Mediterranean-style building with an arched entry similar in design to the Rambus building recently constructed on the block.
Developers from Ascent Venture Group, Inc. plan to lease the site to an “upscale” business, such as a financial institution or law firm, said company co-owner Tom Rees, who is a longtime Los Altos resident.
Kenneth Rodrigues & Partners Inc. plan to build a more contemporary building for the Red Lobster site, including 10-foot-wide bays with inset windows and a mission-tile roof. The building would include an underground parking lot accessed from El Camino.
Noise, parking, size
Noise, parking and size were key council concerns regarding each project. The city asked both developers to scale down the buildings’ entryways, saying it didn’t want a row of “statement” offices along El Camino.
Last week’s meeting was the second time that the Red Lobster project went in front of the city. City staff asked Rodrigues to resubmit the plans last March after discovering that the mandatory public notification list for the project fell short of the required 500-foot radius.
The planning commission reconsidered the project after the first submittal and asked the developer to increase the rear setback of the building, tint the glass on the second-story windows and lower the entry tower.
The council last week required that Rodrigues include a parking management plan in its lease to limit the site’s Los Altos Avenue parking lot to overflow employee parking and that traffic exiting onto Los Altos Avenue be able to turn right only.
The council is scheduled to review the city’s general development plan for the El Camino corridor and could consider adopting stricter buffer regulations that would protect residential neighborhoods from the noise and glare associated with commercial buildings.
The three-story Rambus building at the former Tree Farm site has stirred much controversy from residents who say the buildings lighting and noise have disrupted their neighborhood.
