REQUEST FOR CITY COUNCIL ACTION
DATE: June 16, 2021
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Council Members
FROM: Community Development Department
SUBJECT:
Title
Conditional Use Permit 2021-0001 to establish a daycare facility for Kiddie Academy generally located at the southeast corner of Bedford Canyon Road and Eagle Glen Parkway, on property zoned General Commercial by the Arantine Hills Specific Plan.
End
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Conditional Use Permit 2021-0001 (CUP2021-0001) is an application by Kiddie Academy to establish a daycare facility for children within the Bedford Marketplace shopping center. The zoning of the property is General Commercial (GC) by the Arantine Hills Specific Plan. The GC zone allows a daycare facility with the approval of conditional use permit, which is the reason for CUP2021-0001.
RECOMMENDED ACTION:
Recommended action
That the City Council:
a. Take no action, thereby affirming the Planning and Housing Commission’s action granting CUP2021-0001, based on the findings contained in the staff report and conditions of approval.
OR
b. Set the item for review at a subsequent meeting.
Body
BACKGROUND & HISTORY:
CUP2021-0001 is to establish a daycare facility within the new Bedford Marketplace commercial center currently under construction. The Bedford Marketplace is located at the southeast corner of Bedford Canyon Road and Eagle Glen Parkway and covers 21.7 acres. The site design for the entire shopping center was approved by the Planning and Housing Commission on July 7, 2020, by Precise Plan 2019-0008 (PP2019-0008). The center was approved for 134,378 square feet of commercial/retail space and a 135-room hotel. The building pad for the proposed daycare facility was included in the original site design. The zoning of the project site is General Commercial (GC), which permits daycare facilities with approval of a conditional use permit. CUP2021-0001 is limited to the review of the daycare facility. All other aspects of the commercial center, including the overall parking, landscaping, architecture, signage, and on-site circulation were reviewed and approved by the center’s previous precise plan application.
ANALYSIS:
Site Plan and Floor Plan
The daycare facility building is 9,990 square feet with an outdoor playground on the west side facing Bedford Canyon Road. The facility is located between the shopping center’s south entrance and an existing water quality basin that is separated from the shopping center by fencing.
The facility’s main entrance is located on the east side of the building. The interior has a lobby and reception area where parents would drop off and pick up their children through an electronic sign-in system. The facility consists of 10 classrooms with toilet rooms, administrative offices, and a kitchen area. The kitchen is designed as a modest meal preparation area for the students and staff. The building will be also equipped with a fire sprinkler system.
Per County Health Department regulations, the daycare must provide a dedicated outdoor play area within a secured perimeter. The daycare’s proposed playground will be fenced with a 5-foot-high metal tubular fence. The playground is 12,520 square feet in area and divided into three fenced areas:
• Infant/toddler
• Pre-K
• School Age
Two accessible gates with alarm-panic devices will be located on each side of the playground, which provide occupants of the building a secondary emergency exit from the property.
The applicant has identified the maximum occupancy load for the building is 185 people, based on the California Building Code. Kiddie Academy anticipates a maximum operational capacity of 162 students and 20 teachers (182 occupants) at any given time.
Hours of Operation
The proposed hours of operation of the daycare are Monday through Friday, from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Kiddie Academy intends to operate as a daycare for children aged 6 weeks to 5 years old, and as an after-school care program for children aged 5 to 12 years old. Most children at the facility will spend an entire day at the facility and will attend two to five days a week. The daycare program includes a cooked/prepared lunch and an after-school program that provides a van service that picks up and drops off students who attend half-day kindergarten programs at nearby schools.
The Kiddie Academy also intends to accommodate older children who need after-school care when a younger sibling attends the facility. In these cases, the Kiddie Academy van will pick up the older children from a nearby school and take them back to the Kiddie Academy facility, for parent pick-up.
Access and Parking
The Bedford Marketplace has three driveway entrances from Bedford Canyon Road. The proposed daycare facility is accessible from any one of the three entrances. The entire center is designed to have reciprocal access and parking for all tenants.
The parking requirements for the Bedford Marketplace was previously analyzed under PP2019-0008 for compliance with the City’s Parking Ordinance. The center is required to have 799 parking spaces based on the types of land uses that will operate in the center. The center will have a total of 995 parking spaces, which is a surplus of 196 parking spaces.
Architecture
The daycare building is designed to be consistent with the American Farmhouse architectural theme adopted by the Arantine Hills Specific Plan for commercial buildings. The building’s design will be consistent with the other commercial buildings within the Bedford Marketplace.
Landscaping
The landscaping surrounding the daycare facility is consistent with the landscape design theme approved for the overall Bedford Marketplace. The drought tolerant plant palette provides a low maintenance, functional, and attractive landscaping for the site. The developer of the Bedford Marketplace will install the landscaping adjacent to the daycare facility and in the nearby parking lot. The developer will also install the landscaping within the playground. The plan includes perimeter trees, which will be installed along the west side of the playground to provide a buffer between the playground and future residences located across Bedford Canyon Road to the west. The daycare pad is also lower than Bedford Canyon Road by approximately six feet.
Signage
Kiddie Academy is required to comply with the sign program approved for the Bedford Marketplace, which ensures consistency within the center. Kiddie Academy is allowed exterior wall signs on all four sides of their building. The maximum allowable size of a wall sign on each elevation is based on a formula of 1.25 square feet of sign area per one lineal foot of building frontage.
Kiddie Academy will be sharing a monument and/or pylon signage with the center. The sign program was approved with five multi-tenant monument signs along Bedford Canyon Road and one 40-foot high multi-tenant pylon sign on the center’s east perimeter adjacent to Interstate 15. The application is not requesting any changes to the center’s approved sign program.
FINANCIAL IMPACT:
The applicant paid the application processing fees of $6,819 to cover the cost of the Conditional Use Permit application.
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS:
The City Council certified a Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) on May 20, 2020 (application GPA2019-0002) in conjunction with the Bedford Marketplace. The certified SEIR corresponds with the Arantine Hills Specific Plan Final EIR, certified on August 5, 2012 (SCH #2006091093), a supplement to the Final EIR (May 19, 2016), and an addendum to the Final EIR (December 19, 2018). Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines § 15162(a), the City has determined that no additional environmental review is necessary for the proposed project (CUP2021-0001), as the proposal is consistent with the project and circumstances analyzed under the certified SEIR, and there are no substantial changes nor new information of substantial importance.
PLANNING AND HOUSING COMMISSION ACTION:
At its meeting of May 24, 2021, the Planning and Housing Commission considered the subject matter and took the following action:
Motion was made, seconded (Meza/Sherman) and carried unanimously that the Planning and Housing Commission adopt Resolution No. 2568 granting CUP2021-0001, based on the findings contained in the staff report, the conditions of approval and the added conditions of approval by the Commission to include additional shade trees within the playground area for Pre-K children and to include bollards on the south side of the center’s driveway near the daycare building that extends to Bedford Canyon Road. The minutes of the Planning and Housing Commission meeting are included as Exhibit 4.
PREPARED BY: JOANNE COLETTA, COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
Attachments:
1. Exhibit 1 - Locational and zoning map
2. Exhibit 2 - Site plan for CUP2021-0001
3. Exhibit 3 - Planning and Housing Commission Staff Report
4. Exhibit 4 - Draft minutes of the Planning and Housing Commission meeting of May 24, 2021