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City Council Meeting Minutes June 25, 2020 <br />Favorite attributes the survey asked - As you walk downtown, what are some of <br />your favorite attributes? <br />The top 10 responses include: landscape beautification (78), shade/mature <br />trees, shaded sidewalks (76), historic buildings (restored) and features (53), <br />sidewalks and bike lane/paths (51), lively street scenes, including outdoor <br />dining (47), small businesses/local feel/diversity in businesses (33), window <br />shopping (31), courthouse and its lawn (25), murals and art (21). <br />The similar big ideas that came from both the focus groups and online survey <br />include: <br />• Visual continuity and designs that are compatible with one another <br />• Preserving and reusing historic buildings, and designing new buildings to be <br />compatible with historic buildings <br />• Maintaining the San Marcos identity and character <br />• Addressing key topics including height, views, materials, sustainability, <br />parking <br />Mr. Winter continued the presentation to discuss the following design topics & <br />analysis: <br />Massing - Existing guidelines are brief and high level and provide some <br />additional detail but focus only on varied upper floor massing. Potential <br />updates will include additional information and examples of how to apply <br />varied building massing options and this will include options beyond varied <br />upper floor massing. After a brief discussion by Council and Commissioners, <br />the consensus was to include various massing with more detail such as the <br />examples provided. <br />Commissioner Moore noted that buildings like this couldn't be built today <br />because of the parking requirements. She believes that we need to lower our <br />parking requirements and ask people to walk to where they need to go. Given <br />that, how can we recreate this nostalgic area like we want? Mr. Winter said we <br />may not see buildings such as those we have now, but we can learn from them. <br />Most of those buildings were on narrow lot widths but the architecture can be <br />translated to a larger building. It is true that parking is an elephant in the <br />room for any downtown there is a transitional point of deciding to adjust <br />parking ratios, it may affect the scale of the building, but from an architectural <br />standpoint is not an important design guideline and we can address it. A <br />storefront can wrap around the parking. For a parking level, there are other <br />ways to make it interesting. That's why the issue of four-sided design is so <br />interesting. People had commented on the blank walls along alleys that now <br />we want people to walk there. Enhancing the pedestrian level will help support <br />City of San Marcos Page 5 <br />