How will losing open space improve our quality of life?

This is amazing. Hey Google! Want more housing? Build it yourself. Want to eliminate the need? Hire local people qualified to work for you. Google doesn't seem to care that the citizens of the City do not want more traffic. We don't need Google. We prospered long before Google and we will survive long after Google.

Talk about a corporation trying to hold a city hostage for it's own needs. I don't know about the rest of you that have called Mountain View home for 40+ years but this is disturbing to me.

This isn't Google View, this is Mountain View. I urge the members of the council to tell google we are not going to bend to their threats or their need to make our city 'sustainable for Google'.

Damn. Google is running [word removed] in MV.

Regarding the perspective of biotech companies NOT wishing to be located to residential communities, I base this on direct industry input including a corporate visit that City staff and I made as past Mayor whereby a pharmaceutical company moved from Palo Alto to Mountain View's North Bayshore as a direct result of Palo Alto building residential homes next to their corporation. In addition that same year, at a biotech summit we the City held with BayBio, the North Bayshore area was seen as desirable for biotech not residential.
Mountain View has lost both open space and commercial land to rezoning to residential in the past fifteen years. Some residential infill is appropriate in the right areas, North Bayshore is not it. What North Bayshore needs like all of Mountain View is a local shuttle route w/in Mountain View. Unfortunately, the shuttle operating cost of $250,000 annually is tough to swing these next few years.

The former SGI buildings now comprising the largest Google buildings are much taller than "two stories" as reported. Most of the other buildings in the Googleplex area are two stories

Google is funding Mtn View police and firemen and schools and free internet. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. That area is an industrial park - keep it that way, or keep it open space.

Seriously? Is there really a question as to wether homes should be built in the middle of a business park? No one wants a business park built next door to their house, obviously. Do we expect businesses to feel differently? The two uses are so fundamentally different, that they are not compatible neighbors. Cities all through the bay area think they can steal each others residents (tax revenue) by building housing everywhere, with no regard to common sense. All of the worst residential neighborhoods on the peninsula are on the east side of 101, yet the business parks there have flourished.

@MrOpenSpace: The proposed plans from the General Plan revisioning process do NOT convert open space to anything else. The proposals suggest turning what is currently *very* inefficient office park space to more mixed uses (including traffic demand management proposals via transit connections, bike paths, and pedestrian-oriented design).

Everyone: Have you ever biked through the N Bayshore area? Or heaven forfend, tried to walk it? There's acres of land just used as parking lots! How is that good for anyone? Why can't we have a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood instead of lots of dead pavement and single-story aging office buildings?

I support intelligently-planned mixed use in N Bayshore, because I think it would be awesome to live or visit friends there, and it's a great place for MV to grow in a healthy, sustainable way.

If by development you mean cleaning up the Moffett corridor, improving public services and creating a communiy - I say yes!

I say let Google build a self-sustaining, ultra green megaplex a la Oracle with condo towers next to office towers and a major hotel. Let's face it folks, Mountain View is not a sleepy suburban community. We are part of a giant connected metro region and we mine as well build a "city of the future" here to show how great our city is to live in.

North Bayshore has three access roads, not two, with Shoreline, Rengstorff and San Antonio roads. The San Antonio road over pass on 101 needs to be widened along with all the access roads.

We also need a connect to Moffett Blvd. from North Bayshore.

If you build it they will come, and keep coming, before you know it we will be so populated, the quality of life around town will SuCK!

So the point is to keep building and expanding in MV until what? It is overpopulated, crowded, and not worth living in? And what if Google ever decides to leave? Like to India. We will be the Detroit of the West Coast.

Let us not forget that this area of Mountain View was the city Dump. Any development is better than what it was.

Big Al, good point - yeah, let's piss off Google and send them packing to India...yeah, that's all we need. We need Google. The only thing that will protect us from being the Detroit of the West is the beauty of our openspace areas. So, let's not screw that up, ok? We don't need to develop every damn square foot of greenery with chicken coop condos.

Posted by Mr. T, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, 2 hours ago

Let us not forget that this area of Mountain View was the city Dump. Any development is better than what it was.

OK... and before that it was pristine wetlands.

Yes, pristine wetlands. Let's bring them back.

How about razing half the crappy buildings on El Camino and tenement apartment buildings on California Ave and building the mixed use vision there. How long do we have to look at those infested eye sores?

If residences are built in this area, just imagine the complaints about Shoreline concerts. :) Keep this area for businesses.

Google has continued to impress me every year. I am proud to say I'm a Mountain View resident and Googles headquarters, in the same breath. Google will not only help lead Mountain View, but the entire world, into the future. We are blessed to be along for the ride. Keep up the good work Google! Ps... I've been a die hard Apple fan since 1980. But once I picked up the Droid I put down my Iphone permanently! Well done and thank you!

People of the world should think of ways to save their planet. Has the presence of so many malls and almost empty mansions improved our quality of life? Is our dependence on foreign brains still helping us? Why not shift the attention in making our local environment condusive to the correct developent of our young brains? Waste not want not.

I agree with Andrew, if we put homes near Shoreline Amplitheater, the result will be complaints about the noise from the concerts, the traffic, and the noise from the air base.


It's a business park.

Behind Shoreline Park are wetlands and more coming in the future. I do agree housing y Shoreline will cause problems but then again people live near noisy stuff elsewhere. We do need compaines like Google and the people that create and work for them. We must keep Silicon Valley in the valley not watching it go away.

Puzzled - You obviously have not driven down North Whisman between Middlefield and Farchild. Industrial parks and homes can live together. Zoned R4, 291 Evandale is still a prime location for Google to build housing, right next to abandoned commercial buildings they can fix up (except for that pesky super fund problem.) -- Perhaps they can take over the Microsoft Campus after Microsoft pulls up shop here...

I wonder how the burrowing owls feel about all this. Where's their voice in the process?

Puzzled wrote: "Is there really a question as to wether homes should be built in the middle of a business park?"


It's called "mixed use development". Many argue that it is better for the environment, as it reduces the need for automobiles. You can read more about it here: Web Link

In fact, when moving here from Europe ten years ago, I was struck by how separated the business and residential districts are in US cities. In Europe they are more mixed, which I think leads to more pedestrians, more cafes, and a pleasant cityscape.

Maybe we don't want to be like Europe.

You should try it. It's like SF but with good weather -- very enjoyable.

Congrats to THOM and Nony mouse on getting their pithy comments quoted in the NY Times. One can only hope this will inspire others on this blog to new standards of writing.

Laura Macias: Google already has Shuttles, can the public use them? NO!

Puzzled: There are homes on the east side of 101 in the North Bay Shore Area! I don't see anything "Bad" about that community! Plus it is already around Siemens and Omnicell, which are bio tech firms!

Deb: Yes I walk it everyday! Feel sorry for people that have to sit in traffic to get to their final destinations!

Mr. Big: I agree, we need to widen San Antonio Road (Which belongs to Palo Alto if I'm not mistaken). Though it sounds neat to have "High Rise Buildings" I don't know if this town can handle it!

Mr. T: I applaude for bringing up the originality of what the area use to be! Yes it would be better than what it was!

Big Al: At least there is an 'ATTEMPT' of cleaning up 'some' of the apartment buildings on California Avenue! (got to love affordable housing)

Andrew: We, the community in which I live in, already complain about the traffic from time to time to put a light at Space Park Way for us! None the less, complaining about how the State of California rerouted La Avenida St!

As far as my two cents, being a "Resident" in North Bay Shore Area, the traffic has increased ten-fold with Google, I applaude their wanting of further development of a mixed community, but what we really need to look at is the congestion and decreasing it. I've for many years have argued with VTA of re-routing the 104 bus that once allowed me to take one bus from home to work (in Palo Alto), letting them know if they went back to re-route there will be more people using the bus.

If they feel the need to develop the land which is already mixed at this moment, then the council and members of the transporation committee really need to buckle down and reconfigure the public transportation within that area!

I would also like to point out that I am hoping that the City Council would reconcider looking at the PRT:

Web Link

As well I think less congestion would also happen if we as a community in the North Bay Shore Area can take part of the Google and Microsoft Shuttle! VTA system has really gone down hill the past few years and I can only see it getting worse!

Thank you!

Transportation is one of the keys. Maybe the most important. The problem with PRT is that it is fixed and not inexpensively re-configured (i.e. Moffet mini-city). If we cannot figure out how to run a regular bus system (VTA has a big yard right near Google) how is the city or Google going to do it! A BRT (bus rapid transit) system would have a large and fast capacity. This is a system, like San Paolo's, that devotes lanes and signal changing devices to bus transportation.
Google does not contribute taxes to schools (aside from a minimum revokable 1/5 of what full property tax rates would). With the Shoreline District keeping all property tax increases FOREVER, any new development will not help schools. [please read the Shoreline-Schools Joint Powers Agreement and the legislation setting up Shoreline District]

Steven, That is a nice idea for the BRT, but I can not imaging that (a private lane for buses only) running down Shoreline. If we do something like that we should then look at having VTA put in a light rail down Shoreline where they can have an elivated track, sort of what they do through Cisco/Great Mall (Milpitas Area). This will allow us (residents and workers) to connect to downtown quicker and faster down shoreline. When it comes to concerts people will then have an easier connection and less cars on the road from CalTrain!

In all it looks like the North Bay Shore area would eventually be a great idea, just worry about the transportation problems down Shoreline! It's already busy as is, and there isn't a concert every day! ;)

I hope you realize that Google does not bring in much tax base for the city besides property tax. Why you ask? They don't sell any products that get taxed which is why they don't have a store front. But here and now they are sending a message to the city council in a nice tone. I'll make it clear...We asked to put in a hotel to assist business and you denied that. Now we are asking to make the area around our business a better area with homes and retail. Key word is retail. If you don't we will go elsewhere. We walked away from bigger deals than this (Time Warner) and we'll pick up and move to. So hey...City Council listen to them... let them develop because if you don't you'll be forced to lay off more employees and continue to talk about your growing deficit. Income, Income, Income = sales tax.

"you'll be forced to lay off more employees and continue to talk about your growing deficit."

You're making a huge assumption that has no merit.

"But here and now they are sending a message to the city council in a nice tone."

Nice tone? Since when has threats become "nice tones"?

Google's administration thinks they are bigger then the people or our elected officials in Mountain View. Google is acting in a childish and immature manner by using threats to get their way.

Making generational decisions based on the assumption that Google will be in Mtn View forever is just so phenomenally stupid that words escape me! Rembember when Shoreline was SGI's campus?

Every council member should be forced to drive out to Shoreline every day at rush hour for a month before they touch the master plan. I dont think that a lot of them work real jobs and have to deal with the realities of traffic and commuting. I know that the mayor thinks traffic is unimportant.

Bravo to Laura Macias's comments above.

I believe the 1985 Mtn. View master plan proposed between 35,000 & 50,000 population for the North of Bayshore area. I recall that this was shot down due to seismic considerations. Has anything changed?

That said, it sounds like they propose building barraks but not in the military sense. Has anyone proposed building apartments for those who might not want to drive home a large distance every night??

We don't have the resources for the increase in population or the infrastructure for the increase of traffic coming in and out of Mountain View and quite frankly, I don't want to see Mountain View change into Googleland.

Mountain View has always been the bedroom community for the big business parks in North Bayshore and for other towns like Los Altos and Palo Alto who seem to be able to put a limit on their growth or change the character of their towns. Why can't we do the same? Our City Council has no backbone to stand up to Google and just say no.

Is this Mountain View's way of trying to have someone else clean up their Super Fund sites and surrounding areas? It's getting ridiculous.

I would be proud of our City and it's council if they said no to Google's current plan for a new office park and expansion and instead, built affordable housing for our Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and those afflicted from previous wars. I think people tend to forget or do not know Mountain View's long history of supporting our service men and women.

I say no more to corporate parks and yes to taking care of those who have defended us and have given up a lot of themselves.

Google's competitive nature to be the biggest company will only destroy Mountain View.