Even a Socal company will fare no better than Toll Brothers. They will start with 3 definite NO votes from the council, which will start adding more conditions to the project and eventually drive up the cost and drive them away. Another victory for the no-growthers on the council and the NIMBY's in that neighborhood.

Political Insider has it right!
While sprawl continues to eat up our farmland this Council does everything it can to “conditionally” defeat much needed infill housing and its retail sales base (e.g. Home Depot). Now they want housing at San Antonio Shopping Center but limited the housing at the HP site which is adjacent to transportation! I dont' understand the logic especially with the City's growing budget deficit and the need to reduce miles driven and to keep our produce local.

That would make an excellent spot for a park!!!

You have some misunderstandings about growth in Mountain View.

1) Mountain View has the least land and one of the highest densities in the Bay Area and it has been adding housing at a much faster rate than the surrounding the cities. The rate of growth has supported by cities and civic groups in Los Altos and Palo Alto that tout "affordable housing" but don't want to put it in their neighborhoods. If you want to see real progress go talk to Palo Alto and Los Altos and get them to do their share of development.

2) Much of that growth has occurred on "the wrong side of the tracks" as it were and the area is now severely deficient in parks and other services while the Mountain View neighborhoods on the other side of El Camino have park space at 3 times the city standard. The City Counsel in the past have been reluctant to try and fix these problems both because there is a deficiency of land to buy up for Parks and they don't want to incur the continuing cost of upkeep for parks because property taxes on housing do not bring in enough money to cover the cost of providing the services over the long term. The councils reluctance to put in the same kinds of densities at say the "Pumpkin Patch" only serves to make the problem worse and create a bigger divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots" that is not good for our city.

3) The Mayfield site is not as adjacent to transportation and services as everyone seems to say it is. One major hurdle is getting safely across Central Expressway to get to the train and shopping. The several competing interests in the intersection make it quite difficult to make any improvements which are desperately needed and requirements for improvements to that intersection was one of the things that Toll Bro.s objected to. Another factor is that few of the services people use are actually within reasonable walking distance including schools. If you want to build walkable neighborhoods then you need to provide at least all the basic services and needs within walking distance.

4) The City Council has been increasing the retail sales base (look at the development a few years ago of REI etc. next to the freeway and the expansion of Costco) but has been criticized for that as well because the big box retailers tend to put small businesses out of business and they contribute to more traffic congestion by encouraging people to drive to shop when there are not local business to shop at. Putting in Home Depot at the San Antonio Center would not have served the community, would not have contributed to the walkability of services for Mayfield and other higher density developments nearby, and would have increased traffic on already congested San Antonio Road. Given Home Depots fiscal situation it likely would not have lasted long either. With two other Home Depot stores within a few miles the community would be better served by putting in more diverse retail at the San Antonio shopping center.

I vote with the park supporters. We need more parks, not more high-density housing adding more cars to already over-capacity roads in the area.

Yes, we could take a play from Palo Alto's playbook. Take out the local businesses for housing. My Palo Alto friends shop in .... Mtn. View!

We have been in Mtn. View many years, the population has increased considerably in that time yet there are less grocery stores now than years ago. Palo Alto has suffered a greater decline. Remember Jax market or Food Fair??

More housing? More affordable housing? Smart growth? Green solutions? When I graduated in 1949 the world’s populations was around 2 billion. Our class just had our 60th year reunion. The world’s population is now over 6 billion (Goggle – Pop. Est. Jul 08 6,706,993,152.)

Four billon more people were added to the 2 billon (2 +4= 6) that the world had when I graduated 60 year ago. Do we need more affordable housing for the next 4 or 6 billon (or will it be again possibly adding a doubling of the number of people in the world today (6 +12 = ? in the next 60 years – for the slow math learners on the City Council).

What most people and politicians have not figured out is that we do not have too few jobs or housing; we have too many people for the jobs necessary to support the civilization. Are you ready for the next bigger bubble and bust cycle?

More people are unemployed today due to the mild recession than were unemployed during the great depression!

(California Population - 1930 - 5,677,251 and 1950 - 10,586,223 and in 2009 - 38,292,687 -Web Link
The California has a similar population growth rate as world and everywhere we are running out of resources. I keep asking how long can this growth continue?

Oh, I forgot. The reunion was the Mountain View high School Class of 1949. They tore down the beautiful Mountain View High school on Castro Street for more housing. The same age Schools of Palo Alto and Fremont High are still standing. Room for redevelopment I presume.

Yes, the old mountain view high school was nice, alan cranston also graduated from there back in the days.

Maybe the populatioon solution should be to limit the amount of children any one family can have. So no more 8 babys at one time.

Monta Lomans’ self serving comments and attempt to re-write the facts (e.g., a tunnel under Central and a much larger park as part of the development, VTA bus service, a CalTrain station on Central, San Antonio Shopping Center within a half mile! Please, enough elitism! Have some compassion for the environment!

Another vote for the park idea!

great ! now if we could just make it affordable to the below poverty incomes that make up most of the city and the valley we would all be happy!

While it might be possible to require part of the Mayfield property to be used as park space, turning the entire property into a park would entail paying HP millions and millions of dollars, and possibly use of eminent domain to seize the property.

Meanwhile, a large park, Rengstorff, is only a short distance away. Perhaps it would be used more if there were safer access from the neighborhoods on the east side of Central, such as a bridge or a tunnel.

I suspect, though, that a lot of residents of those neighborhoods still wouldn't visit Rengstorff Park because they perceive it as being part of a poor, Spanish-speaking neighborhood. That's a harder problem to solve. Increased police presence to deal with the occasional genuinely scary character hanging out there might increase their comfort level.

My point is: a bridge or tunnel, more police presence, and whatever else it might take to spruce up Rengstorff Park, would cost a heck of a lot less that creating a major park at Mayfield.

re: "The City Council has been increasing the retail sales base (look at the development a few years ago of REI etc. next to the freeway..."

Just FYI. A lot of Mountain View folks probably don't realize this, but the shopping center with the REI, etc. is in Palo Alto.

Neighborhood parks provide valuable outdoor space for children in the neighborhood. Currently, the one at Monta Loma School (the exisiting park for the neighborhood that the Mayfield site is in) is used significantly on the weekends for soccer and other ball games. It's not going to change, Mountain View parents have been trying to put in more ball fields for years.

I'm not against ball fields, I think they are wonderful and great for kids to be involved in sports. But, when the prime hours of the only park within walking distance are taken up with organized sports then it shuts down all sorts of other play time in the park for neighborhood kids.

The choices are for parents to get in their car and drive with their children to another park or no park play time. Safer access to Rengstorff Park would help but it's too far to walk with a small child from Monta Loma and the Mayfield site and no parent is going to let their child go to Rengstorff Park alone so it doesn't solve the problem of needed local parks north of El Camino in Mountain View.

Just building at higher densities without planning in the necessary services is short sighted. Walkable, environmentally sound development means walkable services too or the new residents will make traffic and polution worse when they have to get in their cars to take their kids to school, buy groceries, and even spend an afternoon in the park.

Love all the random comments up here from people who just talk off the cuff with little understanding. First, a park is nice, and I love the few that I use regularly. But the idea is to create more tax revenue and places for more taxpayers to live. A park is great, but it is all expense and upkeep. You could argue that the new park would make the area more attractive to future residents, but you would have nowhere to put those you attract.

Next, Jay, sorry but even with this economy, this is still one of the wealthiest places on earth. No, below the poverty line does NOT make up the majority. Not here at any rate.

And Godfrey, they did not tear down MVHS for more housing. They tore it down because as the population has aged, they could no longer fill all those schools they built in the baby boom. Happened nationwide and it is unfortunate, but cyclical.

I hope this doesn't turn into the Alma Plaza fight. Every time Palo Alto nears an agreement on what to allow in the strip mall where Lucky's used to be on Alma St., someone sues to stop it. Empty office buildings do not help the Monte Loma neighborhood nor the city as a whole. A park in part of the space would be great but it's not practical for the whole space. And while I share the concern about overpopulation, not building housing in MV won't slow it down. Housing in the Mayfield site might just add less traffic than somewhere else in the city that isn't near stores and a transit hub, as long as a safe way to cross Central Expressway is provided.

By the way, I checked REI.com - the store on Charleston is in Mountain View.

Near a transit hub has no noticeable impact on traffic congestion relief.

BART with the S.F. Bridge out has 460,000 riders a day (a new record). Considering a person goes to work and back that is about 230,000 riders a day - Bay Area population is over 7,000,000 - that is 3 percent (are Bay Point and Pittsburg riders include in the Bay Area’s number?) Considering that BART does not cover the hole Bay Area the readership may be 5 percent of the population. Now adding in the trips that these people make with their cars from the Bart Stations and their 5 t0 9 trips people make per day (OK subtract 2 trips from those numbers for some BART riders ) for must peoples and you have traffic congestion.

The urban myth fantasy so many people and government officials have is childlike tooth fairy bring money belief.

How stupid and ignorant can people be to think transit will solve the congestion problem even if high density housing is build around all the stations?

re: "By the way, I checked REI.com - the store on Charleston is in Mountain View."

Dang, you're right.

@Ben --

Nice to see you here again, nay-saying any and all development and growth like you always do... but it would be nice if you used real facts rather than just making them up off the top of your head.

You take the ratio of BART's daily ridership divided by the rough Bay Area population as a rough estimate of the percent of area residents who take transit on a daily basis. But what you overlook is the fact that BART ridership is actually less than one-fourth the total transit ridership in the Bay Area. For a recent tally, see this site:
Web Link

While 117 million 'unlinked trips' (ie, single rides by passengers) were made on BART in all of 2008, the total for the 9 larger agencies shown here is about 494 million unlinked trips... and this does not include the other 17 transit agencies in the area. (For a list of all the agencies in the Bay Area, click on the Bus and Rail tabs here:
Web Link

So Ben, your estimate of percent riding transit is likely less than 1/4 the actual figure. How about you use some real facts the next time you post one of your rants claiming that others are "stupid and ignorant"?

I don't think Ben is that far off with his numbers. The EIR on the Mayfield site projected about 3% of the new population using public transportation.

What is an ironic twist is that other studies have shown that public transportation generates more riders when the stations are placed closer to destinations, that is proximity to the travelers destination is more important than proximity to the travelers home in generating ridership and reducing vehicular traffic.

The implication of this is that the approximately 27 acre Mayfield site would generate more public transit use and less vehicular traffic if it were developed as a destination site such as a shopping center or office building.

Now did I just read that Mountain View just acquired a 9 acre parcel for economic development near the 101 and that it was desirable because it had good freeway access? Doesn't that imply increased vehicular traffic? What about using Mayfield for economic development and encouraging train ridership instead?

@huh?

Just because Ben stumbles into the same rough percentage that was in the EIR by dumb luck (using BART ridership as the indicator, even though BART doesn't serve the Mayfield site or even Santa Clara County) doesn't make it solid math. And it's certainly not strong enough evidence to call people who he disagrees with "stupid and ignorant" (actually, in a civil forum, there should be no room for such a comment). That is what I was most objecting to in my post above.

I ask this purely out of curiosity. . . How many more cookie-cutter / mixed housing retail structures does Mountain View (or the South Bay, for that matter) really need? Is building over 400 home "units" mixed in with some commercial real estate in this area really necessary?