A tour of Kiku Crossing, an affordable housing community near downtown San Mateo, was a highlight of Affordable Housing Month. The tour showed how a set of transportation demand management strategies including Clipper BayPass, shared parking, and secure, plentiful bike storage help residents living in the community; help the city bring affordable using a downtown parking lot, and help the developer complete the project with less costly car parking.
The 225-unit development, which opened in 2024, was built on a surface parking lot near downtown San Mateo Caltrain. The development provides .7 vehicle parking spaces per resident, and supports households with fewer cars to get around by providing in the BayPass all-agency transit pass pilot, in addition to a SamTrans only bus pass, which had been Mid-Pen’s previous offering. The popular all-agency BayPass allows residents access to more jobs, education, family and recreation.
In addition to the transit benefits, Kiku Crossing provides a large room for secure bike storage. The image below shows how the bike parking room is filled in the evening; during the daytime tour there were many open spaces since kids and adults take their bikes out to commute to school and work.
Also, the bike storage was designed before the recent spread of e-bikes and e-scooters. Residents need to take e-scooters and e-bikes up to their residences to charge instead of using the bike locker room on the first floor. Mid-Pen said they will consider the need for e-bike storage for future developments.
Shared parking
In order to make the development work for the city, it includes a 5-story parking garage with 526 public spaces including parking spots that are available to the public during the day, 164 spaces dedicated for residents, and 84 spaces in the public garage available for residents in the evening, as a city pilot program.
Photo credit: Max Mautner
Lessons learned
The garage with 500+ spaces of public parking, which was important to get the city’s approval while keeping costs down, is unfortunately not yet well used. The blocks near Kiku Crossing are slated for development, but those projects have stalled in current market conditions; those sites are expected to create additional demand for the shared spaces.
The garage is a few blocks away from the busiest downtown area and the city has not yet created signage showing the location of available parking, although that wayfinding signage had been part of a plan started before the pandemic. In addition, the nearby area has unmetered street parking.
The anticipated development nearby, plus improved city wayfinding and parking management can help the spots be better utilized.
The City and the developer have been working out the administrative process to manage the shared parking, since customer service questions come to the property management staff and the city.
Summary
Other cities in the area are planning similar projects with affordable housing on city-owned parking lots. The Kiku Crossing story shows how proactive transportation demand management and shared parking can make these sites work for the residents, developer and cities. The success of the Clipper BayPass as part of this story shows the value of this program, and the importance of maintaining and expanding BayPass and related programs for integrated fares which provide affordable transportation and support the region’s critical need for affordable housing.