Remodeling Plan for Portola Valley fire station worries neighbors
March 2021. On March 25, 2021, the Almanac reported on the proposed renovation of the Woodside Fire Protection District's Station 8 on Portola Road, which was presented at the March 17, 2021 Planning Commission meeting. While no one questioned the need for or desirability of the proposed renovations, there was considerable debate over the fire station’s current zoning status.
After the fire station was built in 1970, the Town amended its zoning ordinance in 1987 to remove “public buildings” from the list of conditional uses permitted in the fire station’s R-1 residential zoning district. The article chronicles the history of zoning amendments that resulted in the station’s apparent non-conforming use, possible alternatives to address that situation, and various statements made during the hearing regarding those alternatives. The article quotes PVNU’s President and Director of Outreach Rita Comes Whitney at length, who questioned the need to revoke the prior 1987 amendment excluding "public buildings” from the R-1 zoning district. "The clear and obvious need to permit a pre-existing fire station, staffed 24 hours/day, to qualify for a conditional use permit in a residential neighborhood does not demonstrate the need for or propriety of changing our zoning ordinance to allow any use that can be categorized as a 'public building' to be permitted in a residential neighborhood. What exactly is the reason to create an exemption that is much, much broader than the present application and the demonstrated need?"