A surprising 7-0 vote. A great addition to the city.

School?

Please don't let the VTA determine the home's density, their goals are not our goals. They want to pay off their white elephant and do not live here. Some high density is fine, but like BART in Fremont, if all you do is build high density homes for the mass transit system, you get, well to be blunt - FREMONT.

Water shortage's, traffic, pollution, empty buildings. Why build more? Enough already. How's that song go? First you take paradise and put up a parking lot.You don't know what you got till its gone!Let's plant trees for now and build later when I'm dead and gone.

In response to the post from Secondly above about the City's goals and VTA's goals...

The City's General Plan calls for creation of higher-density housing and commercial development near transit, in order to provide more housing options, improve energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and make the best use of scarce land resources.

VTA would like to see the creation of higher-density housing and commercial development near transit, to help cities provide more housing options (which can create transit riders), improve energy efficiency (which can be achieved by a shift to transit), reduce greenhouse gas emissions (ditto), and see each city make the best use of scarce land resources around the transit system.

Mountain View is a member agency of VTA, is represented in VTA's Board and Committee system (our Mayor is the chair of the Policy committee), and partnered with VTA on the creation of the light rail extension to Mountain View in the 1990s. It is in both the City's and VTA's interest to make the best use of this transit investment to achieve all the goals listed above.

Dear Balance viewpoint, Thank you for the info, now my question to you is, is there a shortage of housing right now in Mt.View? Do we really need it right now at this time? Can't we just enjoy what we have? How much money are these houses going to sell for? 8 to 1.1 million? Is that affordable to maybe the google and yahoo crowd? Do we need more shops in Mt.View? Whats wrong with the shops on Whisman and Middlefield? Will they survive when there is more competition? Are they struggling now? I just don't understand why we need to build more other then making more money for the developer. Have you seen the project on Mathilda, Its bankrupt and it will be awhile before they finish it.

I've been a Mountain View resident for 16 years now.

I think we're growing too much. Getting too "urban"-ish, along with all the good and bad that it brings.

I'd rather not see more housing, or more shops. I'd like us to take better care of what we have. (Food Street, anyone?).

(By the way, what neighborhood is the East side of North Rengstorff?)

More cars more noise more smog why would we want high density housing. Light rail is way too slow and goes two few location so the people who live in this new housing might on the average use it once a week or less while all of their other trips will be in cars. The city council has been fooled again.

I thought that the city government's primary responsibility was to the current residence. Silly me.

Compared to the Mayfield development which has been under considerable scrutiny and open for public comments from MV residents prior to approval by the City Council, I feel like this zoning change was approved through the back door. Every new development in the Whisman neighborhood is denser and has less public park area than previous development/phase. When approving this type of zoning changes the Council should consider existing densities in neighboring areas. The Mayfield development is primarily surrounded by low density residential areas (1-6 units/acre), whereas density in the existing Whisman neighrhood next to the proposed development is at least three times higher. Providing the developer the option to build either two-story single family homes or three-story row homes with a simple desire from the council for two-story single family homes is not enough. Developers are driven by profit and MV residents rely on the City Council to put clear limits to developers. I find totally unacceptable that impact to traffic by this new project is simply considered as "significant and unavoidable."

First off ... it's so gratifying to find out that I don't live in a "neighborhood" ... my part of Mountain View doesn't seem to count. Regarding the proposed density of this development ... why is it that Mtn View City Council/Planning Department always insist on putting the super high density housing on this side of Central Expressway????? 38 acres on this side = 1100 homes. 15+ acres on the "good" side of town (The farm on Grant Road) = 50 homes. Hmmmmmm. Wouldn't it be nice if the 38 acres up for grabs became home to just 100 - 150 homes???? Between NASA's business park plan and this plan, traffic is going to become a nightmare.

seems as though the overwhelming majority feels the same way for several reasons against mtn. views high and higher density policies. apparently that majority elected the current council members who have obviously no intention to listen to the people that put them there and are running on their own agenda.
we are facing a water shortage and they want to add more demand?
how idiotic is that? the grant road project isn't that much more demanding as the "farm" had irrigation demands. but the rest of it?
c'mon city councilmen use your heads, oh, that's right................

The water shortage is mostly to due to a lack of price rationing. Some cities do not monitor water usage and charge a fixed fee. The council listens very carefully but not to unverifiable claims and just plain nonsense. How much density is too much? Everything mentioned above was studied for several years. To claim the re-zonong was done by the backdoor is just nonsense. Most of the comments above are ill-informed.

Grant road has 30,000 trips per day. hard to argue that 220 more trips from the levin project will have a significant impact.

Let's all be honest and admit the council in MV is OWNED by developers, all councils are. Remember the other development on Ferguson, I live next to it. They changed the maximum height of the buildings at the behest of the builder - no other reason.

OK by me to build houses, but let's build houses, not the umpteenth set of undistinguished row homes - again - FREMONT - is that what we want, go visit Fremont, come to Mountain View and then tell the council to THINK for once. Really, just tell the council for the first time ever to actually THINK. Is another set of row homes what we need. After looking at Fremont you will say NO.

Congrats to the developers for buying themselves a nice council.

Balanced ? I must have misunderstood the word. That is an ad for the VTA. Balance means looking at both sides, clearly you aren't - please change your screen name to VTA Monger, that way it is clearer your intentions.

I love public transport, trains and mass transit are great, but they are built for the people of a community, you suggest that we build our people's homes around our transit. OOPS, that is backwards. Does the light rail reduce traffic - i would guess by .000002 percent. It is poorly designed and expensive to ride and stops extensively included on Central Expressway for no apparent reason.

Let's build a community that is served by transit, not the other way round.

I call on the city council to reverse this terrible high density housing. How can we get them to look at this again and come to the aid of the people that elected them?

I find it interesting that the most vociferous opponents of this supposed "high density" development on this board are from the Whisman Station and Crossings neighborhoods -- which were primarily built within the past 10 years. Benefit from the newer housing that previous Councils had the foresight to approve, then yell for the gates to be locked after that...

And for truly high-density housing near light rail, check out Portland, or parts of San Diego. The densities in many new developments there are three to four times those proposed in the South Whisman Precise Plan, yet Portland and San Diego rank extremely high on most livability indices.

A lot of mis-informed ranting. You are correct "interesting" about some of the whisman residents. They purchased at a location that was previously commercial and then opposed any new development. To suggest that the council is owned by the developers is just plain silly. Check out the campaign spending records , most give thousands of dollars to council member in other cities and little if any to MV council members. What attracts developers to MV is a council and staff that respects the rights of property owners in a fair way. What some residents want is to violate these rights since they were here first.

Bottom line here is greed. More money to line to pockets of city officals, is all they care about.

They don't think about the water shortage, they don't think about the traffic, the over population, the congestion, the air quaility, the sewage problem, the trash problem, all they care about is more money.

It's a sad state when 7 people can control the outcome that involves millions.

Is thew city council paying any attention to what is going on with enrollment in the MVWSD? Where will these children go to school? I'm tired of high density housing, Mountain View is slowing losing it's charm.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?