The bottom two floors are commercial, the third floor mixed, and the top four would include most of the 164 market-rate apartments in the project. Parking includes 164 spaces for residential and 75 for commercial in the project, which includes the demolition of two industrial buildings from the early 20th Century that are “structures of merit” in the city’s Historic Resources Inventory.Liz Schuller is the city’s project manager for the parcels at 120 and 138 Stockton Avenue, the subject of last Wednesday’s public hearing, and a site that Hudson purchased in 2004. Staff is recommending approval of rezoning the 1.72 acres from Commercial General to Planned Development as part of the “Urban Village” called for in the Diridon Station Area Plan.

“It’s a requirement for the site,” Schuller said last week about tenets of the Area Plan, which demands a 0.5 floor area ratio of commercial space in the project. Hudson revised his proposal to meet that standard after initially proposing 9,000 square feet of commercial space.

Three residents wrote letters to the city about the project and about 20 attended a Planning Commission work session September 28, expressing concerns about its height, design, sustainability and lack of affordable housing. Schuller said if the project receives its permit for a planned development by July 1, the builder can apply for an exemption rather than pay a required impact fee for its absence of affordable housing.

Mitigation of impacts from noise, air pollution and hazardous waste are addressed in an addendum to prior environmental reviews done for the Diridon Station Area Plan and the Downtown Strategy Plan. The addendum is also under consideration Wednesday.

Schuller said the addendum drafted by Denise Duffy and Associates of Monterey considered the historical merit of the existing buildings to be insufficient for local Historic Landmark status or inclusion on either the state or national historic registers. They are the Smith Manufacturing Company building and the Western Elevator Manufacturing Company building, whose construction dates estimated respectively at 1916 and the late 1920s are thought by Hudson to actually be “a little bit later than that.”

Campbell-based Hudson Companies was founded locally more than 50 years ago by the current owner’s father and uncle, Robert and Eugene Hudson. It also has a four-story commercial project currently under city review that would be located on Winchester Boulevard, where it has built several projects before.

If the Stockton Avenue rezoning is approved by the city council next month, Hudson said he hopes to break ground within a year. He repeated concerns last week that the commercial footage required is “a little bit heavy.”

“It’s a requirement that the city has, and I’m not sure it will always be there,” said the developer, suggesting that the city may need to relax its requirement if the market does not support that much commercial. Nonetheless, he is excited about the site’s proximity to the new Whole Foods Market on Stockton as well as Guadalupe River Park and the city’s largest transit center.

“Caltrain is a big plus for us,” he enthused of Diridon Station, which also serves buses and light rail. “I think one day BART will end up there too.”