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VISTA ---- Saying it wants to stop developers from coming to the city with proposals for visually lifeless "cookie-cutter" projects, the city's Planning Commission has requested a joint meeting with the City Council on Tuesday to review Vista's standards for architectural design.

"We're not asking for (developers) to come to us with award-winning architectural designs or anything," said Commissioner John Aguilera on Friday. "We're just asking them to kick it up a notch."
The joint workshop will be held at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 600 Eucalyptus Ave, followed by the commission's regular meeting at 7 p.m.

Before commercial, industrial or multi-family residential projects are considered by the Planning Commission and City Council, developers go through a design review process with city staff members. The lengthy document that guides that process is the city's Design Review Manual, which was adopted nearly 20 years ago with the stated purpose of ensuring "future development is of high quality."

The manual states, for example, that for row-type town houses, "each unit should be varied as to setback and height to provide visual relief," and for commercial buildings a "totally monochromatic appearance should be avoided."

However, some planning commissioners have said recently that the standards in the review manual are outdated.

Commissioner David Ochs said he would like to see new buildings "get away from a lot of the stucco and have some more accents to get in tune with what some of the surrounding communities are doing."

Twice in the past few months, developers have brought projects before the Planning Commission, only to have the panel ask for design upgrades, including a wider variety of building shapes and color pallettes.

"There were two projects that the commission generally felt could be better, and should be better," Commissioner Bill Martin said. "The buildings were very plain and had a minimal amount of visual interest."

In one case, the commission still voted to recommend approval of the project, provided the developer work with city staffers on improvements before the plan went before the City Council.

Martin said he has reviewed some of the design changes made following that meeting and "the bottom line is, the process worked. It's better than it was."

In another instance, the developer requested more time to work on the project after commissioners expressed concerns about the uniformity of the 11 office buildings envisioned for the high-profile intersection of Sycamore Avenue and South Melrose Drive.

A revised version of that project will be reviewed later Tuesday, during the Planning Commission's regular meeting.

"My primary hope is that the City Council will agree with the commission that it is important to the city that we have high standards for quality," Martin said.

"We're not asking for something that is not economical," Martin added. "There are cost-effective things you can do to affect the quality of design."