MOUNTAIN VIEW — Google’s vision to transform a suburban office park on the city’s north side into a walkable urban village is set to take a significant step Tuesday as the city council weighs the search giants’ latest detailed plans amid concerns about the 30-year construction timeline.
The ambitious proposals — filed by Google in February — for two new neighborhoods on 127 acres of office parks in the North Bayshore neighborhood would boast as many as 7,000 residential units and about 3.1 million square feet of office space, and room for shops, restaurants, open space and a potential school site.
The project would be the largest residential project in Mountain View’s history and second-largest in the Bay Area, all part of the tech titan’s massive investment in the South Bay which includes the long-awaited Downtown West project in San Jose, according to Google development director Michael Tymoff.
Mountain View-based Google, whose headquarters are located a short distance from the proposed neighborhoods, hopes to obtain a final environmental review and city approval in the first quarter of 2022. Once approved, construction could begin about a year later and take decades to complete.
Among the major components of Google’s plan the city council will discuss Tuesday:
- Up to 7,000 new homes spread across various sites in three complete neighborhoods, with a target of 20% as affordable units.
- Up to 299,000 square feet for retail and community spaces.
- Up to 31 acres of public parkland, 19 acres of which will be public land dedicated to the city.
- 3.1 million square feet of office space across six locations.
- A potential school site for the Mountain View Whisman School District.
- Three aboveground district office parking structures and one district parking structure for hotel and other retail.
- New pedestrian and bike paths.
Cliff Chambers for the Mountain View Coalition for Sustainable Planning said in a letter to the city council Sunday that Google’s planning process has “exceeded the vision of the North Bayshore Precise Plan” adopted by the city’s council in 2014. He said Google has “crafted an outstanding blend of urbanism and ecology into a strong sense of place.”
Chambers praised Google’s proposal to build 7,000 new housing units — a jump from the 5,760 homes that the search giant had eyed when it shared a prior set of plans with city officials in 2019 — as well as the over 500 deed-restricted affordable homes it’s planning for. The plan’s transportation network is also “very well thought out,” Chambers wrote, as residents and employees will be able to easily walk or ride a bike to many destinations within the village.
But like other community advocates and some council members, Chambers is worried about the long timeline and wants the city and Google to fine-tune the eight-phase build-out approach the tech company has proposed. Right now, phase 1 includes the demolition of existing office space in what Google calls the “Shorebird” neighborhood and rebuilding offices into new buildings plus 1,118 residential dwelling units.
Google will then build 1,794 new homes in phase 2, office buildings in the Shorebird neighborhood in phases 3 and 4, 612 homes and some retail space in phase 5. The rest of the build-out would occur in phases 6 through 8.
“There is a need for fine-tuning of the phasing plan, and attention will hopefully be paid to making a complete neighborhood viable as soon as possible,” Chamber said. He added that the coalition’s primary message “is that the planning process has been very long, and we would like to see this Master Plan vision implemented as expeditiously as possible.”
Mountain View Vice Mayor Lucas Ramirez said he’s fairly comfortable with the proposal, though he wants certain milestones and metrics included in the development agreement, similar to the deal struck between San Jose and Google for Downtown West. Those benchmarks in the project build-out ensure that San Jose is benefitting from the proposal during its long construction timeframe, and Ramirez said Mountain View “will want to negotiate similar types of outcomes.”
“I understand the need for a lengthy timeframe, but I think the council and the community have a lot of interest in making sure the community benefits that are proposed are actually delivered within a reasonable time,” Ramirez said. “The community has high expectations for this project, so we’re happy to lock in some standards and fees. If by year 15 we still aren’t seeing phase 1 implemented, we may want to have a mechanism that says ‘okay, this is happening too slow,’ and provide some amount of community benefit.”
Ramirez said his role as a policy and legislative analyst for San Jose councilman Sergio Jimenez gave him insight on how Mountain View and San Jose differ in their relationship with Google.
“San Jose and Mountain View are working with Google very differently,” Ramirez said. “In Mountain View, we already have the North Bayshore precise plan where we say ‘here are the land uses, heights, parking requirements, and expected benefits’ in contrast with San Jose which took the vision proposed by Google and produced a set of regulations that was largely consistent with it. For San Jose to try to work that all at the same time proved much more difficult. Mountain View has that regulatory framework and vision already.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com