The city might want to think about the fact that the economy is going into a slide right now and consider belt tightening for a while rather than an armful of expensive new projects.

Build a big new hotel in a bad economy and you end up with a bunch of empty rooms.

Looking another way, start planning the building of a hotel, and in a few years when it is ready the business cycle might be turning the corner...

The Enomony ig going south, but you got to think about the future, and who knows might be someone out there willing to build, workers working due help the economy. Plan for the future now.

No, thank you. I live in Old Mountain View and think it's a terrible idea to put a hotel at the corner of El Camino and Castro. There is already a humongous amount of traffic on that corner. Plus Castro street would be backed up even worse than it already is. The Old Mountain View area streets (other than Castro) are quiet and charming. To add a hotel would ruin that. A bed and breakfast could be nice alternative. Or would we have a need quaint diner. Us locals that live near the corner of El Camino and Castro would like a nice hot breakfast that serves good coffee that we could walk to.

A bigger downtown hotel would actually be nice for that spot. You don't ruin the charm of the street further down towards the train tracks, and you now have a much more local spot for any MV businesses downtown. Should a developer choose to build another office building in the downtown corridor, having a nicer hotel within walking distance would be a big sell. Granted, Hampton Inn is down the street the other way from Castro street. Also, the city should make sure it doesn't end up like the Pacific Euro hotel on Evelyn.

I don't think the timing is ever wrong to discuss projects intended to improve downtown, good economy or bad. The corner of Castro and El Camino is a good place for a hotel, or even a mixed use project.

That said, I think the city should direct its efforts at improving San Antonio Shopping Center and the surrounding commercial area. In addition, it should concentrate its efforts towards making the city more pedestrian and bicycle friendly to encourage people to ditch their cars for local trips.

I have an idea. How about placing a hotel on the corner across the street from Washington Mutual? The property is vacant from a fire which ocurred last year. It's near Peet's Coffee Shop.

MV Resident,

Trying to cross the street at that intersection is crazy enough as it is. A hotel at that location would cause serious traffic and pedestrian issues.

Perhaps the city in their long terms plans might consider building one of those overhead bridges for pedestrians/bicyclists to go across the intersection of Castro and El Camino more safely. Another bridge at the other end of downtown on the corner of Castro and Central would be great as well.

Because of the surrounding residential neighborhood downtown Mountain View can only grow so wide in the future. There is certainly room for downtown to grow longer though. This makes even more sense since the city is considering a free shuttle that could potentially go up and down Castro and bring people to and from their homes, workplaces, restaurants, Caltrain, VTA, etc.

Before we decide to pour a bunch of money into the downtown area, let's work on cleaning it up first. The nightclubs (one in particular) are a huge eyesore for the community and extremely upsetting to the downtown residents. They bring in people who do not live here, who host "after bar" parties in the parking lots of downtown until all hours of the night, even weeknights. There have been fights, apparent drunk driving, and many other issues associated with the people who frequent this club. Until the police and the city do a better job of managing this problem, it seems silly to put so much money into projects to bring more people down here.