City Restricts Ground-Floor Office Uses to Preserve and Encourage Retail Space

PALO ALTO, CA-The City Council here is placing restrictions on ground-floor office restrictions on two of its shopping districts for 45 days while it studies whether and how to continue it for up to another two years. The action is an effort to protect and preserve existing retail space in the city from the lure of higher rents from office users.

At Charleston Center off Middlefield Road, a self-contained shopping complex, the city is dictating that no more than 15% of the center (7,500 sf), be allowed for office use. As well, individual offices would be limited to no more than 2,500 sf, and any new neighborhood-serving medical or professional offices would have to prove they are actually serving the local community. They will have to show they primarily service neighborhood individuals, that they service them primarily on site, and that the buildings are pedestrian oriented in their physical design, says the city’s chief planning official Lisa Grote.

For the Midtown shopping district, further north on Middlefield Road, the rules are slightly different. Ground floor office uses would be similarly limited, and retail buildings wanting to convert to office would need a conditional use permit, and to get it would, like offices at Charleston, have to prove they would actually be serving the neighborhood. The difference is that buildings facing Middlefield wanting to convert to a different type of office also would need a conditional permit, while office facing a side street would not. Three office buildings in Midtown were exempted from the requirements because they were built originally as either bank of office space, Grote tells GlobeSt.